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MAYNARD'S ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES.-No. 158-159 



ESSAYS 



BY , / 

Charles Lamb 



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NEW YORK 
MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 



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Copyright, 1895, by Maynard, Merrill, & Co. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction . . 

Chronology 

(Christ's Hospital FiVE-ANn-TiuurY Years Ago 
My Relations 
Mackery End, in Hertfordshire 

BlAKESMOOR in H SHIRE . 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Te 
Oxford in the Vacation 
The Old Margate Hoy 
The Superannuated Man . 
Dream-Children : A Reverie 
A Character of the late Elia 
Imperfect Sympathies . 

Notes . • • 



PAGE 

. vii 



. 13 

. 27 

. 34 

. 40 

. 46 

. 58 

. 66 

. 74 

. 82 

. 87 

. 92 

. 101 



INTRODUCTION. 

Chakles Lamb was born in London, England, February 10, 
1775, the youngest of seven children. John and Mary were 
senior to him by twelve and ten years respectively; of the other 
four nothing is known beyond the entry of their names in the 
baptismal register. His father, John Lamb, had come from Lin- 
colnshire to seek a livelihood in London, and was for many years 
clerk to Samuel Salt, a lawyer of the Inner Temple. The first 
seven years of Charles' life were spent in the jilace of his birth, 
Crown Office Row, in the Temple. Here he and his sister Mary 
had access to the library of Mr. Salt, the source of their knowl- 
edge of and love for old English authors; the education which 
they thus gave themselves was supplemented by lessons from a 
local schoolmaster. At seven years of age, through the interest, 
perhaps, of Samuel Salt, Charles received a presentation to 
Christ's Hospital School. There he passed the next seven years, 
obtaining a good classical educatiou, and forming life-lasting 
friendships with many, but with none more than with Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge, who inliuenced him much. Christ's Hospital 
scholarships at the Universities were limited to pupils about to 
take Holy Orders, for which Lamb was unfitted by an impedi- 
ment in his speech, apart from the question of the poverty of his 
family, which naturally made him seek to earn something with- 
out delay. During the next three years, or some portion of 
them, he held a situation in the South Sea House, where his 
brother John had a good appointment, where there was also an 
Italian clerk called Elia, whose name was to be immortalized. 

In 1792, through the influence of Samuel Salt, he was ap- 
pointed to a clerkship in the accountants' office of the East India 
Company, beginning with a salary of £70 a year. In the India 
House he continued till 1825, when his salary had risen to about 
£700 a year, half of which was granted him as a pension. 

In 1795 his father, old and infirm, retired from the service of 
]\Ir. Salt, and took lodgings in Little Queen Street, Holborn, 
where in the following year occurred the tragic death of Mrs. 
Lamb, stabbed by her daughter in a fit of insanity. The old 



U INTRODUCTION. 

father survived but a few months; a sister of his vho had formed 
one of the family died about the same time. Thus Charles and 
Mary, who h;;d meantime recovered her reason, were left practi- 
cally alone in the world; for their brother John held aloof, desir- 
ing that Mary should remain in the asylum. Charles had had an 
attack of insanity in the winter of 1795-6; it was, perhaps, in con- 
sequence of this, and the care of his sister, that he gave up the 
idea of marrying the Anna of his sonnets. He had no return of 
the madness, but Mary had fiequent relapses, the approach of 
which she felt in time to enable her to retire to the lunatic 
asylum. 

It was in 1796 that Lamb first appeared as an author, when four 
sonnets by him were published in a volume of Coleridge's 
poems. 

Lamb's first attempt in prose, exclusive of letters, was the tale 
of liosamtrnd Oray (1798), incongruous and improbable, showing 
the author's weakness in narrative, but exhibiting the pathos, 
quaintness of description and appropriateness of cpiotation which 
form the excellence of the Essays of Elia. Of it Shelley wrote: 
" What a lovely thing is his Rosamund Gray ! How much 
knowledge of the sweetest and deepest part of our nature is in it!" 
In the same year lie wrote what is perhaps the best linown of his 
poems, the first stanza of which he afterwards omitted — 

"Where are tliey gone, the old familiar faces ? 
I had a mother, but she died and left me — 
Died prematurely in a day of horrors — 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." 

For the first seventeen years of the present century, Charles and 
Mary Lamb resided within the precincts of the Temple; first in 
Mitre Court Buildings, then in Inner Temple Lane. At the be- 
ginning of this period, Charles was employed as an occasional 
writer of trifles for newspapers, but he soon attempted more am- 
bitious work. 

Itosaimmd Gray had shown that he was defective in the quali- 
ties which a novelist and a dramatist alike must possess. 

In 1806 Lamb succeeded in getting a farce accepted at Drury 
Lane. The following year was published the collection of Tales 
from Shakespeare, the comedies by Mary Lamb, the tragedies by 
Charles. This was for both a congenial task, and one for which. 



INTRODUCTION". Ill 

from the special bent of their studies, tliey were thoroughly 
qualified. 

With the exception of Shakespeare, the Elizabethan dramatists 
and without exception those of the following half century, were 
unknown to the public of eighty years ago. A rich literary 
mine was opened to them in Lamb's Specimens of English Dra- 
matic Poets contemporary with SliaJiespeare; and the notes which 
he added placed him in the first rank of critics. 

In 181 7 the brother and sister left the Temple for the second 
time and took lodgings in great Russell Street, Covent Garden, 
and next year a collective edition of Lamb's works appeared in 
two volumes. 

In January, 1820, appeared the first monthly part of London 
Magazine, though it numbered among its contributors the most 
eminent literary men of the day, it was never a pecuniary success, 
and in 1826 ceased to exist. For it Lamb wrote some forty-five 
essays, beginning in August, 18:20, with the one entitled The South 
Sea House; this he signed with tlie pseudonym Elia, the name of 
the Italian already mentioned as engaged in the South Sea House, 
but of whom nothing further is known. This word. Lamb tells 
us, ought to be pronounced Ell-ia. He continued to employ this 
nom deplume, and in 1823 a collection of the essays which had 
up to that time appeared, was published under the title of Essays 
of Elia. 

Owing chiefly to the greater frequency of Mary Lamb's attacks 
they gave up housekeeping in 1829, and boarded at a house in the 
same neighborhood. In 1833 they made their last move to the 
house of Mr. and Mrs. Walden, at Edmonton, that Mary might 
be continually under their care. 

Coleridge died the following year. " Coleridge is dead," Lamb 
kept repeating; and he survived his friend but a few mouths. A 
slight hurt on the face, caused by a fall, brought on an attack of 
erysipelas, and his life ended December 27, 1834. Mary survived 
until 1847. 

Though, according to Leigh Hunt, "there never was a true 
portrait of Lamb," we have descriptions by Talfourd, Procter, 
Hood and otiiers, which enable us to picture him in imagination: 
"Aliglit frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would 
overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a head 
of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair 



IV INTRODUCTIO'N". 

curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly 
brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent 
feeling was sad; and the nose slightly curved, and delicately 
carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly 
oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, 
and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shad- 
owy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quiver- 
ing sweetness, and fix it for ever in words ? There are none, 
alas, to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, 
striving with humor; the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial 
mirth; and a smile of painful sweetness, present an image to the 
mind it can as little describe as lose. Ilis personal appearance 
and manner are not unfitly characterized by what he himself saj's 
in one of his letters to Manning, of Braham, 'a compound of the 
Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.' " 

So Talfourd describes him; and all who knew him intimately 
note his gravity, sadness and sweetness. Lamb's natural shyness 
produced a false impression upon strangers, before whom he was 
either silent or gave utterance to ideas and sentiments quite un- 
true to his nature. In a Preface to the second series of the 
Essays of Elia, Lamb gives what purports to be a character of 
Elia. It is of himself that he really makes the following re- 
marks : — 

" My late friend was in many respects a singular character. 
Those who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once 
liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, 
he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en 
out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionists he 
would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction set him 
down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his sen- 
timents. Few understood him, and I am not certain that at all 
times he quite understood himself. He too much affected that 
dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtfid speeches, and 
reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the grav- 
est discussion with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not quite 
irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your long and much 
talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an 
inveterate impediment of speecli, forbade him to be an orator; 
and he seemed determined that no one else should play that part 



INTRODUCTION. V 

when be was present. He was petit and ordinary In his person 
and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called 
good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent and 
be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky occasion pro- 
voking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether 
senseless, perhaps, if rightly taken) which has stamped his char- 
acter for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but nine 
times out of ten he contrived by this device to send away a whole 
company his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his 
utterance, and his happiest impi'omptus had the appearance of 
ellort. He has been accused of trying to be witty, whqp in truth 
he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He 
chose his companions for some individuality of character which 
they manifested. Hence not many persons of science, and few 
professed literati, were of his councils. They were, for the most 
part, persons of an uncertain fortune; and as to such people com- 
monly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled 
(though moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a 
great miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake. His intima- 
dos, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged regiment. 
He found them floating on the surface of society; and the color, 
or something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to 
him; but they were good and loving burrs for all that. He 
never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. 
'If any of these were scandalized (and offenses were sure to arise) 
he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for 
not making more conces.sions to the feelings of good people, he 
would retort by asking what one point did these good people ever 
concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals and diversions, 
but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in 
the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. 
He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the 
friendly vapor ascended, how his prattle would curl up some- 
times with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him were loosened, 
and the stammerer proceeded a statist !" 

Lamb's generosity was great, even in the days of his pecuniary 
difficulties; and as his income increased he gave more and more 
liberally to all who needed help. Nor did he confine himself to 
giving money, but whenever he could be of use spared neither 
time nor trouble. He spent little on himself, and before he knew 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

that the directors of the India House would grant his sister a pen- 
sion, he had laid by £2,000 for her. 

Lamb's position in literature is a remarkable one. We have 
seen that he was not a dramatist; he could not, like Chaucer, 
Shakespeare, or such modern novelists as Thackeray and Dickens^ 
throw himself into, and depict with truth, various characters. 
He could not construct a plot; he had no idea of unity of action. 
He was not, on the other hand, a subjective poet, like Byron and 
Shelley, whom he neither understood nor liked. He could not 
give utterance to great emotions, which were not in his nature. 
What he could do, and what he did to perfection in the Essays of 
Elia, was to seize on the salient features, good or bad, in individ- 
uals or in institutions, and show them to the world in that terse, 
expressive style which he imbibed in his earliest childhood from 
the old English pre-restoratiou authors, whose works he found in 
Mr. Salt's library. He must not be regarded as a plagiarist or as 
a mere echo of that literary period, but rather as a distinct and 
noteworthy genius of the same school. If Lamb uses their lan- 
guage, it is because he has made that language his own; if he 
quotes them, as he does so often, the very inaccuracy of his quo- 
tations proves how spontaneous they were. 

His limitations as a critic are well put by Mr. Aiuger: " Where 
his heart was, there his judgment was sound. Where he actively 
disliked, or was passively indifferent, his critical powers remained 
dormant. He was too fond of parado.x, too much at the mercj^ of 
his emotions or the mood of the hour, to be a safe guide always. 
But where no disturbing forces interfered, he exercised a faculty 
almost unique in the history of criticism." 

The Essays of Elia are in great part biographical ; but so much 
does Lamb delight to mystify the reader, that he makes numer- 
ous fictitious statements, and when he records facts he hints that 
he is inventing. He delights to alter names and dates, and even 
to speak of the same person under different names in different es- 
says. Were it not for outside information we should be at a loss 
to distinguish truth from fiction. 

Not only ought the study of these selected E.ssays to lead to a 
more thorough investigation of the Essays of Elia, but Lamb 
ought to be regarded as an easy introduction to those authors who 
were his models and in whose works the English language arrived 
at maturity. 



CRITICAL OPINIONS 

As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as 
could be, and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him 
melancholy, apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the 
best of everything as it was, both from tenderness of heart and 
alihorrence of alteration. His understanding was too great to 
admit an absurdity, his frame was not strong enough to deliver it 
from a fear. His sensibility to sti"ong contrasts was the founda- 
tion of his humor, which was that of a wit at once melancholy 
and willing to be pleased. He would beard a superstition and 
shudder at the old phantasm while he did it. One could have 
imagined him cracking a jest in the teeth of a ghost, and then 
melting into thin air himself out of a sympathy with the awful. 
His humor and his knowledge both, were those of Hanalet, of Mo- 
liere, of Carlin, who shook a city with laughter, and, in order to 
divert his melancholy, was recommended to go and hear himself. 
Yet he extracted a real pleasure out of his jokes, because good- 
heartedness retains that 'privilege when it fails in everything else. 
I should say he condescended to be a punster if condescension had 
been a word befitting wisdom like his. Being told that somebody 
had lampooned him, he said, " Very well, I'll Lamb-pun him." 
His puns were admirable, and often contained as deep things as 
the wisdom of some who have greater names. . . . Willing to 
see society go on as it did, because he despaired of seeing it other- 
wise, but not at all agreeing in his interior with the common no- 
tions of crime and punishment, he " dumbfoundered " a hmg 
tirade one evening by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and ask- 
ing the speaker, " whether he meant to say that a thief was not a 
good man? " — Autohiogra'plty of Leigh Hunt. 

There is a fine tone of chiaro-oscuro, a moral perspective, in his 
writings. He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the eye 
of memory; he yearns after and covets what soothes the frailty of 
human nature. That touches him most nearly which is with- 
drawn to a certain distance, which verges on the borders of oI)liv- 
ion; that piques and provokes his fancy most which is hid from 
a superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is still remem- 

vii 



Viil CRITICAL OPINIONS. 

bered, is in liis view more genuine, and has given more "vital 
signs that it will live," than a thing of yesterday, that maybe 
forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this sense the spirit of life in 
it, and the shadowy has to our author something substantial in it. 
Ideas savor most of reality in his mind; or rather his imagination 
loiters on the edge of each, and a page of his writings recalls to 
our fancy the stranger on the grate, fluttering in its dusky tenuity, 
with its idle superstition and hospitable welcome. . . . He dis- 
dains all the vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant of criticism, 
and helps to notoriety. He has no grand swelling theories to attract 
the visionary and the enthusiast, no passing fancy to allure the 
thoughtless and the vain. He evades the present, he mocks the 
future. His affections revert to and settle on the past, but then 
even this must have something personal and local in it to interest 
him deeply and thoroughly; he pitches his tent in the suburbs of 
existing manners; brings down the account of character to the few 
straggling remains of the last generation ; seldom ventures beyond 
the bills of mortality, and occupies that nice jioint between egotism 
and disinterested humanity. — Hazlitt on Lamb in " TJie Spirit of 
the Age." 

The prose essays, under the signature of Ella, form the most 
delightful section amongst Lamb's works. They traverse a pe- 
culiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest ; and 
they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch 
the ear of the noisy crowd clamoring for strong sensations. But 
this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness checkered by gleams 
of the fanciful and the humor that is touched with cross-lights of 
pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects 
casually described, whether men or things or usages, and in 
the rear of all this the constant recurrence to ancient recollec- 
tions and to decaying forms of household life, as things retiring 
before the tumult of new and revolutionary generations — these 
traits in combination communicate to the papers a grace and 
strength of originality which nothing in any literature approaches, 
whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most felicitous 
papers of Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley, and 
some others in the same vein of composition. They resemble Ad- 
dison's piij)ers also in the diction, which is natural and idiomatic 



CRITICAL OPimONS. IX 

even to carelessness. They are equally faithful to the truth of 
nature; and in this only they differ remarkably — that the sketches 
of Elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own character, 
whereas in all those of Addison the personal peculiarities of the 
delineator (though known to the reader from the beginning 
through the account of the club) are nearly quiescent. — " Charles 
Lamb : Biographical Essay by Thomas Be Quinccy. 

"Elia" is never verbose, yet never incomplete. You ane not 
wearied because he says too much nor dissatisfied because he says 
too little. In this inimitable sense of proportion, this fitness of 
adjustment between thought and expression, the prose of "Elia" 
reminds us of the verse of Horace. Nor is the Essayist without 
some other resemblance to the Poet — in the amenity which accom- 
panies his satire ; in his sportive view of things.grave, the grave 
morality he deduces from things sportive ; his equal sympathy for 
rural and for town life ; his constant good-fellowship, and his 
lenient philosophy. Here, indeed, all similitude ceases: the mod- 
ern essayist advances no pretension to the ancient poet's wide sur- 
vey of the social varieties of mankind ; to his seizure of those 
large and catholic types of human nature which are familiarly 
recognizable in every polished community, every civilized time ; 
still less to that intense sympathy in the life and movement of the 
world around him v/hich renders the utterance of his individual 
emotion the vivid illustration of the character and history of his 
age. Yet " Elia " secures a charm of his own in the very narrow- 
ness of the range to which he limits his genius. For thus the in- 
terest he creates becomes more intimate and household. — Bulwer 
Lyttoii oil " Charles Lamb and some of his Companions." 

Small and spare in person, and with small legs ("immaterial 
legs," Hood called them), he had a dark complexion; dark, curling 
hair, almost black; and a grave look, lightening up occasionally 
and capable of sudden merriment. His laugh was seldom excited 
by jokes merely ludicrous ; it was never spiteful; and his quiet 
smile was sometimes inexpressibly sweet — perhaps it had a touch 
of sadness in it. His mouth was well shaped ; his lip tremulous 
with expression; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and glitter- 
ing; and he had a grand head, full of thought, Leigh Hunt said 



X CRITICAL OPINIONS. 

that " he had a head worthy of Aristotle." Hazlitt calls it " a 
fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." Although sometimes 
strange in manner, he was thoroughly unaffected ; in serious 
matters thoroughly sincere. He was, indeed (as he confesses), 
terribly shy; diffident, not awkward in manner; with occasionally 
nervous twitching motions that betrayed this infirmity. He 
dreaded the criticisms of servants far more than the observations 
of their masters. To undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said 
to me when we were going to breakfast with Mr. Rogers one 
morning, was " terrible." His speech was brief and pithy; not too 
often humorous, never sententious nor didactic. ... It was 
curious to observe the gradations in Lamb's manner to his various 
guests, although it was courteous to all. With Hazlitt he talked 
as though they met the subject in discussion on equal terms. 
With Leigh Hunt he exchanged repartees; to Wordsworth he was 
almost respectful; with Coleridge he was sometimes jocose, some- 
times deferring, — From " CliavUs Lamb: a Memoir," by Barry 
Cornwall. 



CHRONOLOGY 

1775. Born in Crown OflSce Koav, in the Temple. 

1782-9. At Christ's Hospital; subsequently becomes clerk 
in the South Sea House. 

1792. Obtains clerkship in the India House. 

1796. Contributes some poems to a volume issued by 

Coleridge at Bristol. 
Death of his mother by the baud of his sister Mary 
in a fit of insanity. After a short confinement 
Mary recovers, but is all her life subject to 
recurrences of the malady, when she has to 
leave her home for an asyhim. 

1797. Second edition of poems by S. T. Coleridge, with 

poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. 

1798. Publishes the Tale of Rosam2md Gray. 

1799. Death of his father. From this time Charles and 

Mary live together in various lodgings, except 
when Mary has to be put under restraint. (For 
Mary Lamb see the Essay Mackery End.) 

1802. Publishes John Woodvil ; a Tragedy. 

1806. Writes a farce, Mr. H., which is put on the stage, 
but fails. 



Xll CHKONOLOGT. 

1807. Publishes Tales from Sliahespeare, the joint work of 

himself and his sister; followed by the The 
Adventures of Ulysses. 

1808. Edits Specimens of English Dramatic Poets con- 

temporary with Shakespeare, with critical 
comments. 

1818. Publishes "Works" containing poems and varioua 
critical essays ; e.g., on Hogarth, Wither, Shakes- 
peare, with Rosamtmd Gray, the Dramatic 
Pieces, &c. 

1820. Begins to write for the London Magazine over the 
signature "Elia." 

1823. Publication of the First Series of the Essays of Elia. 
This year the brother and sister move out of 
London, and settle first at Islington, then at 
Enfield and Edmonton. 

1825. Receives a pension from the Directors of the India 
House, and retires (see the Essay, The Super- 
annuated Man). 

1833. The Last Essays of Elia collected and published. 

1834. July— Death of Coleridge. 
December — Death of Lamb. 



" He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and yeats, 
Far worthier things than tears ; 
The love of friends without a single foe : 
Uneqaalled lot below." 

W. S. Lakdob, To the Sister of Elia. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 
FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO 

IN Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two since, I 
find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,* such as it 
was, or now appears to him to have been, between the years 
1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own 
standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his; and, 5 
with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, 
I think he has contrived to bring together whatever can be 
said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the 
argument most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect that he 10 
had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his 
schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were 
near at hand ; and he had the privilege of going to see them, 
almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinc- 
tion, which was denied to us. The present Avorthy sub- 15 
treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that happened. 
He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were 
battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — our crug — 
moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, 
smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. 20 
Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the 
pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched 
for him with a slice of " extraordinary bread and butter," 
from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of 
millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three banyan to 25 
four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his palate 
with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make 

• Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 



14 lamb's essays. 

it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In 
lieii of our half-picliled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef 

30 on Thursdays (strong as caro equina), with detestable 
marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty 
mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, 
on the Tuesdays (the only dish whicli excited our sippetitos, 

35 and disaj)pointed our stomachs in almost equal proportion) 
— lie had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting 
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the 
paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by 
his maid or aunt ! I remember the good old relative (in 

40 whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd 
stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of 
higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered 
to the Tishbite) ; and the contending passions of L. at the 
unfolding. There was love for the bringer; shame for the 

45 thi]ig brought, and the manner of its liringing ; sympathy 
for those who were too many to share in it ; and, at top of 
all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions !) predominant, 
breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, 
and a trouT)ling over-consciousness. 

50 I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who 
should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances 
of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me 
in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had 
the grace to take of me on my first arrival in toAvn, soon 

55 grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to 
recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; and, 
one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone 
among six hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early 

60 homestead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards it 
in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would my 
native town (far in the west) come back, with its church, 
and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in 
the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in 

C5 Wiltshire ! 



Christ's hospital five-and-thirty years ago. 15 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the 
recollection of those friendless holidays. The long warm 
days of summer never return but they bring with them a 
gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day leaves, 
when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out, for 70 
the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we had friends 
to go to, or none. T remember those bathing-excursions to 
the New-River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, I 
think, than he can — for he was a liome-seeking lad, and did 
not much care for such water-pastimes : — How merrily we 75 
would sally forth into the fields ; and strip under the first 
warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace in the 
streams ; getting us appetites for noon, which those of us 
that were penniless (our scanty morning crust long since 
exhausted) had not the means of allaying — while the cattle, 80 
and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us and wo 
had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the 
day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, 
setting a keener edge upon them! — How faint and languid, 
finally, we would return, towards night-fall, to our desired 85 
morsel, half -rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of our 
uneasy liberty had expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about 
the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print- 
shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last 90 
resort, in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times 
repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well- 
known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the 
Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, 
we had a prescriptive title to admission. 95 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented us to 
the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. 
Any complaint which he had to make was sure of being 
attended to. This was understuod at Christ's, and was an 
efiectual screen to him against the severity of masters, or 100 
worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these 
young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have 
been called out of my bed, and looked for the 2>urjJose, in the 



16 lamb's essays. 

coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night after 

105 night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern 
thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my 
callow overseer, when there has been any talking heard after 
we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dor- 
mitory, where the youngest children of us slept, answerable 

110 for an ofl'ence they neither dared to commit, nor had the 
power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny drove the 
younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were perish- 
ing with snow ; and, under the cruellest penalties, forbade 
the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in sleepless 

115 summer nights, fevered with the season, and the day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned, in after days, was 

seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I 
flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of 
that name who suffered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts — 

120 some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent 
instrument of bringing him to the gallows. ) This petty Nero 
actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red- 
hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us, with exacting con- 
tributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young 

125 ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the connivance 
of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he had con- 
trived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the ward, as 
they called our dormitories. This game went on for better 
than a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but 

130 he must cry roast meat— happier than Caligula's minion, 
could he have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! 
than any of his species in the fables — waxing fat, and kick- 
ing, in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would 
needs proclaim his good fortune to the world below ; and, 

135 laying out his simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, as 
(toppling down the walls of his own Jericho) set concealment 
any longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with 
certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never understood 
that the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. 

MO This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. 

Under the same facile administration, can L. have for- 



chkist's hospital five-and-thirty years ago. 17 

gotten tlie cool impunity with which the nurses used to 
' carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables, one 
out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron had 
heen seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners 1 These H5 
' things were daily practised in that magnificent apartment, 
which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) praises so 
highly for the grand paintings "by Verrio, and others," with 
I which it is "hung round and adorned." But the sight of 
sleek, well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at that time, I l^'O 
believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, who 
saw the better part of our provisions carried away before our 
faces by harpies; and ourselves reduced (with the Trojan in 
the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 155 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to gags, or 
the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down to some super- 
stition. Tut these unctuous morsels are never grateful to 
young palates (children are universally fat-haters), and in 
strong, coarse, boiled meats, imsalted, are detestable. A 160 
gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a goiile, and held in 
equal detestation. suii'cred under the imputation : 

'T was said 



He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the 1G5 
remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice 
fragments you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, 
these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, 
and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. 
None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that he 170 
privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, but 
no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable. Some 
reported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to carry out 
of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, fuU of some- 
thing. This then must be the accursed thing. Conjectui-e 175 
next was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. 
Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally 

B 



18 lamb's essays. 

prevailed. He went about moping. None spake to him. 
No one would play with him. He was excommunicated ; 

180 put out of the pale of the school. He was too powerful a 
boy to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of that 
negative punishment, which is more grievous than many 
stfipes. Still he persevered. At length he was observed by 
two of his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the 

185 secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that purpose, to 
enter a large worn-out building, such as there exist specimens 
of in Chancery Lane, which are let out to various scales of 
pauperism, with open door and a common staircase. After 
him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four 

190 flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened 
by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened 
into certainty. The informers had secured their victim. 
They had him in their toils. Accusation was formally pre- 
ferred, and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. 

195 Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened a little after 
my time), with that patient sagacity which tempered all his 
conduct, determined to investigate the matter before he j^ro- 
ceeded to sentence. The result was, that the supposed 
mendicants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious 

200 scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an honest 

couple come to decay — whom this seasonable supply had, in 
all probability, saved from mendicancy ; and that this young 
stork, at the expense of his own good name, had all this 
while been only feeding the old birds ! — ^The governors on 

205 this occasion, much to their honour, voted a present relief to 

the family of • , and presented him with a silver medal. 

The lesson Avhich the steward read ujjon rash judgment, on 

the occasion of pul^licly delivering the medal to , I 

believe would not be lost upon his auditory. — I had left 

210 school then, but I well remember . He Avas a tall, 

shambling youth, Avith a cast in his eye, not at all calculated 
to conciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen him 
carrying a baker's basket. I think I heard he did not do 
quite so well by himself, as he had done by the old folks. 

215 I Avas a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy in 



Christ's hospital five-and-thirty years ago. 19 

fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothcvS, 
was not exactly fitted to assuage tlie natural terrors of 
initiation. I was of tender years, barely turned of seven ; 
and liad only read of sucli things in books, or seen them but 
in dreams. I was told he had rim moaij. This Avas the 220 
punishment for the first offence. — -As a novice I was soon 
after taken to see the dungeons. These were little, square, 
Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at his length upon 
straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards 
substituted — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a 225 
a prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here the 
poor boy was locked in liy himself all day, without sight of 
any but the porter who brought him his bread and water — 
who miijht not speak to him ; — or of the beadle, who came 
twice a week to call him oiit to receive his periodical chastise- 230 
nient, which was almost welcome, because it separated him 
for a brief interval from solitude : — and here he was shut up 
by himself of nights out of the reach of any sound, to suffer 
whatever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident 
to his time of life, might suljject him to.* This was the 235 
penalty for the second offence. Woulclst thou like, reader, 
to see what became of him in the next degree 1 

The culprit, who had been a third time an offender, and 
whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 
brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, arrayed in un- 240 
couth and most appalling attire — all trace of his late 
" watchet weeds " carefully effaced, he was exposed in a 
jacket resembling those which London lam]tlighters formerly 
delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of this 
<1ivestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it could 245 
have anticipated. With his pale and frighted features, it 
was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had seized 

* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordinj^ly, 
at lengtli convinced tlio governors of the impolicy of this part of the 
sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dis[)ensed with. — 
This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's ]>rain ;, 
for which (saving the reverence due to Holy I'aul) methinks, I could 
willingly spit upon his statue. 



20 lamb's essays. 

upon him. In this disguisement he was brought into the 
hall {L.'a favuurlte state-room), where awaited him the 

250 whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and 
sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awful 
presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the 
executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; 
and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in 

25.5 these extremities visible. The.se were governors ; two of 
Avhom by choice, or charter, Avere always accustomed to 
officiate at these Ultima Sapplitia ; not to mitigate (so at 
least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. 
Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, were 

2G0 colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather 
pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prejiare him for the 
mysteries. The scourging was, after the old Roman fasliion, 
long and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal quite 
round the ball. We were generally too faint with attending 

2G5 to the previous disgusting circumstances, to make accurate 
report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering 
inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and 
livid. After scourging, he was made over, in his San Beuito, 
to his friends, if he had any (but commordy such poor run- 

270 agates were friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to 
enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to 
him outside of the hall gate. 

Tiiese solemn pageantries were not played off so often as 
to spoil the general mirth of the community. We had 

275 i)lenty of exercise and recreation after school hours ; and, 
for myself, I must confess, that I Avas never happier than in 
them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar 8chools Avere 
held in the same room; and an imaginary line only divided 
their bounds. Their character Avas as different as that of 

280 the inhabitants on the two sides of tlie Pyrenees. The 
Rev. James Boyer was the Upper IMaster ; but the Rev. 
MattheAV Field presided over that portion of the apartment 
of Avhich I had the good fortune to be a member. We lived .t, 
life as careless as Inrds. We talked and did just Avhat wft 

2S5 pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, 



Christ's hospital pive-and-thiety years ago. 21 

or a grammar, for form ; but, for any trouble it gave us, we 
might take two years in getting through the verbs deponent, 
and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about 
them. There was now and then the formality of saying a 
lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across tlie 290 
shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole re- 
monstrance. Field never used the rod ; and in truth he 
wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding it "like a 
dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem tliau 
an instrument of authority ; and an emblem, too, he was -IQb 
ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did not care to 
ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great consideration 
upon the value of juvenile time. He came among us, now 
and then, but often stayed away whole days from us ; and 
when he came it made no diflerence to us — he had his private 300 
room to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be out of the 
sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We 
had classics of our own, without being beholden to " insolent 
Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among us — 
Peter Wilkins — the Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert 305 
Boyle — the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or 
we cultivated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ; 
making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious 
parentheses called cut-cradles; or making dry peas to dance 
upon the end of a tin ytipe; or studying the art military over 310 
that laudable game "French and English," and a hundred 
other such devices to pass away the time — mixing the useful 
with the agreeable — as would have made the souls of 
Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines who 315 
afiPect to mix in equal pro|)ortion the getitleman, the scholar^ 
and the Christian ; but, I know not how, the first ingredient 
is generally found to be the predominating ^dose in the com- 
position. He was engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly 
bow at some episcopal levee, when he should have been 320 
attending upon us. He had for many years the classical 
cliarge of a hundred children, during the four or five first 
years of their education ; and his very highest form seldom 



22 lamb's essays. 

proceeded furtlier than two or three of the introdnctory 

325 fables of Phiedms. How things were suffered to go on 
thus I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to 
have remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a 
delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his own. I 
have not been without my suspicions, that he was not 

330 altogether displeased at the contrast we presented to his end 
of the school. We were a sort of Helots to his young 
Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send 
to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with 
Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys " how neat 

335 and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale students were 
battering their brains over Xenophon and Plato, with a 
silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we were en- 
joying ourselves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a 
little into the secrets of his discipline, and tlie prospect did 

340 l)ut the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled 
innocuous for us ; his storms came near, but never touched 
lis; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys turned out the 
better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. 

345 His pupils cannot speak of him without something of terror 
allaying their gratituile ; the remembrance of Field comes 
l:)ack with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer 
slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and 
Elysian exemptions, and life itself a " playing holiday." 

350 Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of 
Poyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand 
a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of 
the Ulalantes, and cauglit glances of Tartarus. B. was a 
rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbarism. 

355 His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those 
jjeriodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes, f — He 

* Cowley. 

t 111 tliis and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. 
Wliile tlie former was digging his brains for crude anthems, wortii a 
pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more 
flowery walks of the Muses. A little drania'ic etlusion of his, under 
the uame of Vertuuinus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 



CimtST's HOSPITAL FIVE-ANC-tHlRTY YEARS AGO. 23 

,'ould. laiigli, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at 
laccus's quibble about Rex — or at the tristis seiKritas in 
ultu, or inqnrere in jjcitir/as, of Terence — tbin jests, which 
I,t their first broaching could hardly liave had vis enough to 360 
inove a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both pedantic, but 
)f different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh-powdered, 
betokening a mild day. The other, an old, discoloured, 
inkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execu- 
I -ion. Woe to the school, when he made his morning appear- 305 
mce in bis fiass)/ or piussirmate wig. No comet expounded 
surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double 
'his knotty fist at a ])Oor trembling child (the maternal milk 
'hardly dry upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you presume to 
'set your Avits at mcT' — Nothing was more common than to 370 
jsee him make a headlong entry into the schoolroom, from his 
I inner recess or library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out 
a lad roar out, " Od's my life, sirrah ! " (his faA'ourite adjura- 
tion) "1 have a great mind to whip you ! "■ — then, with as 
sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his lair — and, 375 
after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but 
the culprit had totally forgotten the context), drive headlong 
out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been 
some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — ^" and I will 
tuo." — In his gentler moods, when the rabidtis furor was 380 
assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, 
for wliat I have heard, to himself, of whipping the boy and 
reading the Debates at the same time ; a paragraph and a lash 
between ; which in those times, when parliamentary oratory 
was most at a height and flourishing in tbese realms, was not 385 
calculated to impress tlie patient with a veneration for the 
ditfuser graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall 
ineffectual from his hand — when droll, squinting W., having 
been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use 390 

chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Ganick, but 
the town did not give it tlieir sanction.^B. used to say of it, in a way 
of lialf-conipliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for rcpresenta' 

tion. 



24 lamb's essays. 

for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify 
himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not hioic 
that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecogni- 
tion of any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck 

395 so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the 
pedagogue himself not excepted), that remission was un- 
avoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor 
Coleridge, in liis Hterary life, has i)ronounced a more intelli 

400 gible and ample encomium on them. The author of the 
"Country Spectator" doubts not to compare him with the 
ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss 
him better than with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he 
l^eard that his old master was on his deathbead : " Poor 

405 J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he be wafted 
to bliss by little cherub boys all head and wings, with no 
bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. — 
First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, 

410 kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and 

inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. What an edifying 

spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who 
remembered the antisocialities of their predecessors ! — You 
never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, 

415 which Avtis quickly dissipated by the almost immediate 
sub-appearance of the other. Generally arm-in-arm, these 
kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome 
duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one 
found it convenient to retire, the other was not long in dis- 

420 covering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, 
it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in 
yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the 
Cicero De Amicitid, or some tale of Antique Friendship, 
which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate ! 

425 — Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed 

with ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern 

courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of 

speech, with raven locks. — Thomas Faushaw Middleton 



Christ's hospital five-and-thirty years ago. 25 

followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a 
gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an 430 
axcellent critic ; and is author (besides the " Country 
Spectator") of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against 
iSharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where 
the regni novi/at< (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the hearing. 
A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker 4'i5 
Imight not bo exactly fitted to impress the minds of those 
Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home institu- 
tions, and tlie church which those fathers watered. The 
manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild and 
land unassuming. — Next to M. (if not senior to him) was 440 
Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited 
of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale studious Grecian. — 

Then followed poor S , ill-fated M 1 of these the 

Muse is silent. 

Finding some of Edward's race 445 

Unhappy, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day- 
sprmg of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before 
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen 4r)0 
the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced 
with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion be- 
tween the qieech and the garb of the young Mirandola), to 
hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the 
mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years 455 
thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or 

reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar while the walls 

of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the in- ■ 
spired charity hoy ! — Many were the " wit-combats " (to 
dally awhile with the words of old Fuller), between him and 460 

C. V. Le G , " which two I behold like a Spanish great 

galleon, and an English man-of-war ; Master Coleridge, like 
the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow 
in his performances. C. V. L., with the English man-of-war 
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, 4(55 



26 lamb's essays. 

tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by tlic quick- 
ness of his wit and invention." 

Nor slialt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, i 
with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with I 

470 which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in 
thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the antici- 
pation of some more material, and, peradventure, jiractical 
one of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that 
beautiful countenance, with wliich (for thou wert the Nireus 

47^, formosiis of the school), in the days of thy niaturer waggery, 
tliou diilst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, wlio, 
incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigressdike round, 
suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half- 
formed terrible "iZ ," for a gentler greeting — •" Wess fJ/y 

480 handsome face ! " 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 

friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who 

impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too 
quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights 

485 poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning 
— exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; perishing, one. 

by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca ; Le G , 

sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged, faithful, 

anticipative of insult, Avarm-h-earted, with something of the 

490 old Roman height aliout him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hert- 
ford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries^ 

and both my good friends still — close the catalogue of 
Grecians in my time. 



! 



MY RELATIONS 



AM arrived at that point of life at wliicli a man may 
account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have 
sither of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — 
','and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in Browne's 
^Christian Morah; where he speaks of a Juan that hath lived 5 
j sixty or seventy years in tlie world. " In such a compass of 
time," he says, "a man may have a close apprehension what 
it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to find none who 
could rememlier his father, or scarcely the friends of his 
youth, and may sensibly see with what a face in no long 10 
time Oblivion will look upon himself." 

I had an ainit, a dear and good one. She was one whom 
single blessedness had soured to the world. She often used 
to say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved ; and, 
when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over me 15 
with mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my 
reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morn- 
ing till niglit poring over good books and devotional 
exercises. Her favourite volumes were Thomas a Kempis, 
in Stanhope's translation; and a Roman Catholic Prayer 20 
Book, with the matins and amiplines regularly set down — 
terms which I was at tliat time too young to understand. 
She persisted in reading them, although admonished daily 
concerning their Papistical tendency ; and went to church 
every Sabljath as a good Protestant should do. These were 25 
the only books she studied ; though I think at one period 
of "her life, she told me, she had read with great satisfaction 
the Advenfures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman. 
Finding the door of the chapel in Essex Street open one 



28 . lamb's essays. 

30 day — ^it was in the infancy of that heresy — she went in, 
liked the sermon, and the manner of worship, and 
frequented it at intervals for some time after. She came 
not for doctrinal points, and never missed them. With 
some little asperities in her constitution, which I have above 

35 hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old 
Christum. She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd 
mind — extraordinary at a repartee ; one of the few occasions 
of hor breaking silence — else she did not much value wit. 
The only secular employment I remember to have seen her 

10 engaged in, was the splitting of French beans, and dropping 
them into a china basin of fair water. The odour of those 
tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense, 
redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is the most 
delicate of culinary operations. 

45 Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — to 
remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to have been 
born an orphan. Brother or sister, I never had any — to 
know them. A sister, I think, that should have been 
Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or 

50 what a care, may I not have missed in her? — But I have 
cousins sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besides ti.vo, with 
whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest 
intimacy, and Mdiom I may term cousins par excellence. 
These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than 

55 myself by twelve, and ten, years ; and neither of them 
seems disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive 
any of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May 
they continue still in the same mind ; and when they shall 
be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare 

CO them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric 
precisely as a stripling or younger brother. 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities, 
which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we 
cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick,'and of none since 

65 his, could have drawn J. E. entire — those fine Shandean 
lights and shades, which make up his story. I must limp 
after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given 



MY EELATIONS, 29 

ae grace and talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common 
bserver at least — seemeth made up of contradictory 
)rinciples. The gv^iuine cliild of impulse, the frigid 70 
Shilosoi)her of prudence • — tlie phlegm of my cousin's 
[octrine is invarialjly at war with his temperament, which is 
ligh sanguine. With always some flro-new project in his 
j>rain, J. E. is the systematic ojjpouent of innovation, and 
'.rier down of everything that has not stood the test of age 75 
ind experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing- one 
uHother hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least 
approach to the romantic in others ; and, determined by his 
')wn sense in everything, commends ijoii to the guidance of 
'lommon sense on all occasions. — With a toucli of the so 
';ccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxitjus 
J-hat you should not commit yourself by doing anytliing 
[ibsurd or singidar. On my once letting slip at taljle, that 1 
-v'as not fond of a certain popular dish, he ))egged me at any 
•ate not to say so — for the wurld woidd think mci mad. He iS5 
disguises a passionate fondness for works of liigh art 
whereof lie hath amassed a clioice collection), under the 
pretext of buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm 
nay give no encouragement to yours. Yet, if it were so, 
vvhy does that piece of tender, pastoral Domenicliino hang '*o 
jtill by his walH— is the ball of his siglit much more dear 
o him 1 — or what picture-dealer can talk like him 1 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their 
speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual 
lumours. Ids theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition 95 
;o his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of Sweden, 
ipon instinct ; chary of his person upon principle, as a 
travelling Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me, all my 
life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the necessity of 
torms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the world. He 100 
aircself never aims at either, that I can discover,— and has 
a spirit, that would stand upright in the i)resence of the Cham 
gf Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of patience 
— extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to see him during 
"tiie last seven minutes that his dinner is getting ready. 105 



30 lamb's essays. 

Nature never ran up in her haste a more restless piece of 
workraaiisliip tlian when she moulded this impetuous cousin 
— and Art never turned out a more elaborate orator than he 
can display himself to be, upon this favourite topic of the 

110 advantages of quiet and contentedness in the state, whatever 
it be, that we are placed in. He is triumpliant on this 
theme, when he has you safe in one of those short stages 
that ply for the western road, in a very obstructing manner, 
at the foot of John Muri'ay's street — where you get in 

115 when it is empty, and are ex^iected to wait till the vehicle 
hath completed her just freight — a trying three quarters of 
an hour to some people. He wonders at your fidgetiness, — 
" where could Ave be better than we are, thus sitting, thus 
conmlting V — "prefers, for his part, a state of rest to loco- 

1-0 motion," — with an eye all the while w\)Vi\\ the coachman, — 
till at length, waxing out of all jjatience at your wmit of it, 
he l)reaks out into a })athetic remonstrance at the fellow for 
detaining us so long over the time which he had professed, 
and declares peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the 

125 coach is determined to get out, if he does not drive on that 
instant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a 
sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of 
arguing. Indeed he makes Avild work with logic ; and 

130 seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by some process, 
not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath 
been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists 
such a faculty at all in man as reason ; and wondereth how 
man came first to have a conceit of it — enforcing his negation 

135 with all the niight of reasoning he is master of. He has 
some siieculative notions against laughter, and will maintain 
that laughing is not natural to him — when perad venture the 
next moment his lungs shall crow like chanticleer. He says 
some of the best things in the world — and declareth that 

140 wit is his aversion. It was' he who said, upon seeing the 
Eton boys at play in their grounds — What a pity to think, 
that these fine iugeimons lads in a few years loill all he, 
changed into frivolous Members of Parliament I 



MY EELATIONS, 31 

] His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age he 
'iscovereth no symptom of cooHng. This is that which I 145 
dmire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I 
'm for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While 
•le lives, J. E. will take his swing. It does me good, as I 
'ralk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine 
jilay morning, to meet liim marching in a quite opposite 150 
■ lirection, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining 
'anguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye — a 
Olaude — or a Hobhima — for much of his enviable leisure is 
'onsumed at Christie's and Phillips's — or where not, to pick 
'{p pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly 155 
toppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a 
)erson like me possesses above himself, in having his time 
(ccupied with business which he must do — assureth me that 
le often feels it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had 
ewer holidays — and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chanting a 160 
,une, to Pall Mall — perfectly convinced that he has convinced 
ne — while I proceed in my opposite direction tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifierence 
loing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly 
loused it. You must view it in every light, till he has 165 
'ound the best — placing it at this distance, and at that, but 
dways suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You 
nust spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial per- 
jpective — though you assure him that to you the landscape 
shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be 170 
■0 tlie luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his 
rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of 
preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present ! — The 
last is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of the minute." — 
Mas ! how many a mild Madonna have I laiown to come in 175 
— a Eaphael ! — keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons — 
then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front 
drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, 
— adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive 
lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall — 180 
consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a 



32 lamb's essays. 

Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! — which things 
when I beheld — musing upon the chances and mutabilities 
of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered 
185 condition of great personages, or that woeful Queen of 
Richard the Second — 

set forth in pomp, 

She came adorned hither like sweet May. 
Sent back like Hallowmass or shortest day. 

190 With great love for you, J. E. hath but a limited 
sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of 
liis own, and makes slender guesses at what passes in your 
mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He 
will tell an old established playgoer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of 

195 So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively 
comedian — as a piece of news ! He advertised me but the 
other day of some pleasant green lanes which he had found 
out for me, knowing me to be a great walker, in my own 
immediate vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot 

200 any time these twenty years ! — He has not much respect for 
that class of feelings which goes by the name of sentimental. 
He applies the definition of real evil to bodily sufferings' 
exclusively — and rejectetli all others as imaginary. He is 
affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature in 

205 ])ain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of woman- 
kind. A constitutional acutenes-s to this class of sufferings 
may in part account for this. The animal tribe in particular 
he taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded 
or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. An 

210 over-loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the apostle to 
the brute kind — the never-failing friend of those who have 
none to care for them. The contemplation of a lobster 
boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that " all for 
pity he could die." It will take the savour from his palate, 

215 and the rest from his pillow, for days and nights. With the 
intense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the 
steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that "true 
yoke-feUow with Time," to have effected as much for the 



MT RELATIONS. 33 

I Animal, as he hath done for the Negro Creation. But my 
uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes 220 
which demand co-operation. He cannot wait. His ameliora- 
tion plans must be ripened in a day. For this reason he has 
cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent societies, and com- 
binations for the alleviation of human sufierings. His zeal 
constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. 225 
He thinks of relieving, — while they think of debating. He 

was black-balled out of a society for the Relief of , 

because the fervour of his humanity toiled beyond the 
formal apprehension, and creeping processes, of his associates. 
I shall always consider this distinction as a patent of 230 
nobility in the Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, or 
upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good 
manners, and the understandmg that should be between kins- 
folk, forbid ! — With all the strangenesses of this strangest 235 
of the Elias — I would not have him in one jot or tittle other 
tlian he is ; neither would I barter or exchange my wild 
kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every way con- 
sistent kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account 240 
of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already surfeited with 
cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go 
with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two 
since, in search of more cousins — 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 245 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE 

BRIDGET ELIA has been my housekeeper for many a 
long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending 
beyond the period of memory. We house together, old 
bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; with 
5 such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find 
in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the moun- 
tains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. 
We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as 
"with a difference." We are generally in harmony, with 

10 occasional bickerings — as it should be among near relations. 
Our sympathies are rather understood, than expressed ; and 
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind 
than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained 
tliat I was altered. We are both great readers in difierent 

15 directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth 
time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange 
contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern tale, or 
adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed 
with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I 

20 have little concern in the progress of events. She must 
have a story — well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be 
life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The 
fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real life — 
have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. 

25 Out-of-the-way humours and opinions — heads with some 
diverting twist in them^the oddities of authorship please 
me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything 
that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her, 
that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common 



MACKEEY END, IN HERTFOHDSIimE. 35 

sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can 30 
pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the 
Religio Medici ; but she must apologise to me for certain 
disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to 
throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear 
favourite of mine, of the last century but one — the thrice 35 
noble, chaste, and virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, 
and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I 
could have wished, to have had for- her associates and mine, 
free-tliinkers — leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies 40 
and systems ; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, 
their opinions. That which was good and venerable to her, 
when a child, retains its authority over her mind still. She 
never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive ; 4.^) 
and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost 
uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circum- 
stances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my 
cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon 
moral points ; upon something proper to 1)0 done, or let i'O 
alone ; wliatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of con- 
viction, I set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run, to 
be brought over to her way of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with 
a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her 55 
faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) 
of reading in coui})any : at which times she will answer yes 
or vo to a question, without fully understanding its purport 
■ — which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree 
to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her 60 
presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, 
l)ut will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When 
the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can 
speak to it greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff of 
the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let shp a 05 
word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; and 



36 lamb's essays. 

she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which 

passeth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled ; 

70 early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good 
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, 
and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. 
Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in 
this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock 

75 might not be diminished by it ; but I can answer for it, that 
it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incomparable 
old maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter ; but in 
the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not 

80 call out the loillio meet them, she sometimes niaketh matters 
worse by an excess of participation. If she does not always 
divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she 
is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent 
to be at a play with, or upon a visit ; but best, when she 

85 goes a journey with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers since, into 
Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less- 
known relations in that iine corn country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End — or 

90 Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some 
old maps of Hertfordshire — a farm-house, delightfully 
situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can 
just remember having been there,. on a visit to a great-aunt, 
when I was a child under the care of Bridget ; who, as I 

95 liave said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wisli 
that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint 
existences ; that we might share them in equal division. 
But that is impossible. The house was at that time in tlie 
occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my 
100 grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grand- 
mother was a Briiton, married to a Eield. The Gladmans 
and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the 
county, but the Fields are almo.st extinct. More tlian foi'ty 
years had elapsed since the visit I speak of ; and, for the 
105 greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 37 

two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited 
IMackery End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid 
I almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 
I By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at 
Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we arrived at the spot 110 
: of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old 
I farmhouse, though every trace of it was effaced from my 
recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not 
experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten 
it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had H^' 
I been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory 
on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I 
thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, 
how unlike it was to that, which I had conjured up so 
many times instead of it ! 1-0 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season was in 
the " heart of June," and I could say with the poet — 

But thou, that didst ajjpear so fair 

To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day \'15 

Her delicate creation ! 

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily 
remembered her old acquaintance again — some altered 
features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she 
was ready to disbelieve for joy ; but the scene soon re- 130 
confirmed itself in her affections — and she traversed every 
outpost of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, 
the place where the pigeondiouse had stood (house and birds 
were alike flown) — with a breathless imi)atience of recogni- 
tion, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at 135 
the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is behind 
her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house — and that 
was a difficulty which to me singly would have been in- 
surmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making myself 140 
known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger 
than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she 



38 lamb's essays. 

soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a 
sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of 

145 the Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become 
mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the 
Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the hand- 
somest young women in the county. But this adopted 
Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all — more comely. 

150 She was born too late to have remembered me. She just 
recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once 
pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of 
kindred, and of cousiiiship, was enough. Those slender 
ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere 

155 of a metropolis, l)ind faster, as we found it, in hearty, 
homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as 
thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up 
together ; were familiar, even to the calling each other by 
our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. 

160 To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of the 
two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an 
amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in 
this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace — 
or so we thought it. We were made Avelcome by husband 

1G5 and wife equally — we, and our friend that was with us. — I 
had almost forgotten him — but B. F. will not so soon forget 
that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far 
distant shores where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf 
was made ready, or rather Avas already so, as if in anticipation 

170 of our connng; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, 
never let me forget with what honest pride this hospitable 
cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us 
(as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Glad- 
mans, who did indeed know something more of us, at a 

175 time when she almost knew nothing. — With what corres- 
ponding kindness yve were received by them also — how 
Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a 
thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and persons, 
to my utter astonishment, and her own — and to the astound- 

180 ment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was 



MACKERY END, IN nERTFORDSHIEE. 39 

hot a cousin there, — old effaced images of more than half- 
forgotten names and circumstances still crowding back 
upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure 
to a friendly warmth, — when I forget all this, then may my 
country cousins forget me ; and Bridget no more remember, 185 
that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge 
■ — as I have been her care in foolish manhood since — in 
those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in 
Hertfordshire. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 



I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at 
will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family 
mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better 
passion than envy : and contemplations on the great and 
fi good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its in- 
habitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the 
bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present 
aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends 
us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In 

10 the latter it is chance but some present human trailty — an 
act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory — or 
a trait of affectatitm, or worse, vain-glory on that of the 
preacher — puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonising the 
place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty 

15 of holiness? — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the 
keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of 
some country church : think of the piety that has kneeled 
there — the congregations, old and young, that have found 
consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile parishioner. 

20 With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, 
drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become 
as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and 
weep around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some 

25 few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an 
old great house with which I had been impressed in this 
way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had 
lately pulled it down ; still I had a vague notion that it 
coxild not all have perished, that so much solidity with 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRB. 41 

magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into 30 
the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, 
and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to — an 
antiquity. 

1 was astonished at the indistinction of everything. 35 
"Where had stood the great gates'? What bounded tlic, 
court-yard 1 Whereabout did the out-hou.sos commence ■? 
A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was 
so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. 40 
The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their projiortion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at tluur proce.'js 
of destruction, at the plucking of every ])anel I sliould have 
felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to 
them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, 45 
in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, 
with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of that 
one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me — it is in 
mine ears now, as oft as summer returns : or a panel of the 
yellow-room. 50 

Why, every plank and panel of tliat house for me had 
magic in it. The tapestried bed-rooms— tapestry so much 
better than painting — not adorning merely, but peopling tlie 
wainscots — at which childhood ever and anon would steal a 
look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise 55 
its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those 
stern bright visages, staring reciprocally— all Ovid on the 
walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. Actteon in 
mid sprout, with the unappeasable priulery of Diana ; and 
the still more provoking, and almost culinary coolness of 60 
Dan Plioebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle died 
— whereinto I have crept, but always in the day-time, with 
a passion of fear ; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, 
to hold communication with the past. — How shall they build 65 
it up aijahi ? 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but 



42 lamb's essays. 

that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere 
apparent. Its furniture was still standing — even to the 

70 tarnished gilt leather battledores, and crumbling feathers of 
shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that children had 
once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the' 
range at will of every apartment, knew every nook and 
corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere. 

75 The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of 
thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. 
So strange a passion for the place possessed me in those 
years, that, though there lay — I shame to say how few roods 
distant from the mansion — half hid by trees what I judged 

80 some romantic lake, such was the spell which bound me to 
the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and 
proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; 
and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder 
devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling 

85 brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. 
Variegated views, extensive prospects — and those at no 
great distance from tlie house — I was told of such — what 
were they to me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden 1 
— So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, methouglit, 

90 still closer the fences of my chosen prison ; and have been 
hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding 
garden walls. I could have exclaimed with that garden- 
loving poet — 

95 Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 

Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
And oh, so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place ; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
IQQ Ere I your silken bondage break. 

Do you, brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me through. 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug fire-sides — the 

low-built roof — parlours ten feet by ten— frugal boards, and 

105 all the homeliness of home — these were the condition of 

my birth — the wholesome soil which I was planted ia. 



j BLAKESMOOR IN" 11 SHIRE. 43 

\iTet, without impeachment to their tenderest lessons, 1 am 
lot sorry to have had glances of something l)eyond ; and to 
jiave taken, if but a jicep, in childliood, at the contrasting 
'iccidents of a great fortune. 110 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to 
iiave been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had 
])n cheaper terms than to be oljliged to an im]>()rtunatp race 
if ancestors; and the coatless anti(puiry in his unembliizoncd 
;ell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De CliUbrd's 115 
pedigree, at those sounding names may warm himstdf into 
iS gay a vanity as these who do inherit them. The claims 
of birth are ideal merely, and what herald shall go about to 
strip me of an idea? Is it trenchant to their swords? can 
it be hacked off as a sjmr can? or torn away like a tarnisl.od 120 
garter 1 

What else were the families of the great to lis? what 
pleasure shnuM we take in their tedious gcuiealogies, or their 
capitulatory brass monuments? Wliat to us the uninterrupted 
current of tlieir bloods, if our own did not answer within 125 
us to a cognate and correspondent chjvation ? 

Or wherefore else, tattered and diminislied 'Scutcheon 
that hung upon the time-Avorn walls of tliy i)rincely stairs, 
Blakesmoor ! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon 
the mystic characters — thy emblematic supporters, witli their 130 
prophetic "Resurgam" — till, every dreg of peasantry purging 
off, I received into myself Very Gentility? Thou Avert first 
in my morning eyes ; and of nights hast detained my steps 
from bedward, till it Avas but a step from gazing at thee to 
dreaming on thee. 135 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the veritaljle 
change of blood, and not, as em[)irics have fabled, by trans- 
fusion. 

Who it Avas by dying tliat had earned the splendid trophy, 
I know not, I inquired not ; l)ut its fading rags, and colours 140 
coliweb-stained, told that its subject Avas of tAVo centuries 
back. 

And Avhat if my ancestor at that date Avas some Damcetas 
— feeding flocks — not his OAvn, upon the hills of Lincoln— 



44 lamb's essays. 

145 did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings 
of this once proud ^gon? repaying by a backward triumph! 
the insults he might possibly have heaped in his life-time 
upon my poor pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present owners 

150 of the mansion had least reason to complain. They had 
long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer j 
trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images i 
I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. 
I was the true descendant of those old W s ; and not 

155 the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste 
places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which 
as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my own family 
name, one — and then another — would seem to smile, 

160 reaching forward from the canvas, to recognise the new 
relationship ; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at 
the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled 
posterity. 

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a 

165 lamb — that hung next the great bay window — with the 

l>right yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so 

like my Alice ! — I am persuaded she was a true Elia — 
Mildred Elia, I take it. 

Mine, too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall with 

170 its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Ceesars — stately busts 
in marble — ranged round ; of whose countenances, young 
reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I 
remember, had most of my wonder ; but the mild Galba had 
my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet 

175 freshness of immortality. 

Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of 
authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luck- 
less poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so common since, that 
bats have roosted in it. 

180 Mine too — whose else? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its 
sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising 
backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower- 



, BLAEESMOOR IN H SHIKE. 45 

bots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, 
luaved from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have 
peen gilt and glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder 185 
';till ; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry 
Hivilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long 
Juvirmuring wood-})igeon, with that antique image in the 
j^entre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or 
bid Kome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to 190 
Syh'aiiu.s in their native groves, than I to that fragmenial 
'tuystery. 

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too 
fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of 
Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough 195 
passed over your pleasant places 1 I sometimes think that 
as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their 
extinguished habitations there may be a hope — a germ to 
be revivified. 



THE OLD BENCHERS 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life, in 
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its 
fountain, its river, I had almost said — for in those younij 
years, what was this kmg of rivers to me but a stream that 
5 watered our pleasant places? — these are of my oldest recol- 
lections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myseK more 
frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, 
where he speaks M this spot. 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
K The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, 
Till they decay through pride. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What 
15 a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first 
time — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, 
by unexpected avenues, into its magnificient ample squares, 
its classic green recesses 1 What a cheerful, liberal look 
hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks 
20 the greater garden, that goodly pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 

confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more 
fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the 
cheerful Crown-office Row (place of my kindly engendure), 
25 right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden- 
foot with her yet scarcely trade-poUuted waters, and seema 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 47 

lut just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man 
yould give something to have been born in such places. 
iVhat a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, 
v^here the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and 30 
all, how many times ! to the astoundment of the young 
irchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess at 
ts recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the 
vondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the 
iiow almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, 35 
liceming coevals with that Time which they measured, and 
:?,iO take their revelations of its flight immediately from 
'.leaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light ! 
ilow would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched 
■ jy the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never 40 
latched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of 
j sleep 1 
j Ah I yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived I 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowel- 45 
ments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of com- 
iaiunication, compared with the simple altar-like structure, 
and sUent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the 
garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost every- 
tvhere vanished 1 If its business-use be superseded by more 50 
elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have 
pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, 
of pleasures not protracted after sun-set, of temperance, and 
good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the 
first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. 55 
It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers 
to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings 
by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd 
*'carved it out quaintly in the sun ; " and, turning philosopher 
by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more 60 
touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of the 
gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial 
gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must 



85 



90 



48 lamb's essays. 

quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full, as _ 
65 his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will i] 
come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains, and si] 
dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : — 

What wondrous life is this I lead 1 

Ripe apples drop about my head. 
70 The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 
75 Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 

Withdraws into its happiness ; 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find ; 
80 Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas; 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot. 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside. 

My soul into the boughs does glide ; 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 

Then whets and claps its silver wings. 

And, till prepared for longer flight," ' 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew. 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ; 

Where, from above, the milder sun 
95 Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 

And, .as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers « * 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or 
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green i 
nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness it gives 
to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to 

* From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



100 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 49 

lY their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresli stream. 105 
)m their innocent-wanton lips in the square of Lmcx. n s 
^B, when I was no bigger than they were figured Ihey 
1b gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell 
3, is gone by, and these things are esteemed chi dish 
iiy not then gratify children, by letting them stand U 10 
'iwyers, I suppose, were children once. They are awaken- 
a images to them at least. Why must everything smack 
° man and mannish? Is the world all grown up? Is 
laldhood dead? Or is there not m the bosoms of the 
isest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond 115 

its earliest enchantments 1 The figures^ were grotesque, 
re the stiff-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter 
,out that area, less Gothic in appearance? or is the splutter 
■ their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent as 
le little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs 120 

"They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner 
emple-hall, and the library front: to assimilate them, I 
ippose, to the body of the hall, winch they do not a all 
:.semble What is become of the winged horse that stood 125 
.er the former? a stately arms! and who has removed 
lose frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of 
le Paper-buildings ?-my first hint of allegory! They 
uist account to me for these things, which I miss so greatly 

The terrace is, mdeed, left, which we used to call the 130 
arade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps 
^hich made its pavement awful! It is become common 
nd profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to 
hemselves, in the forepart of the day at least. ^l^^y^J^g^^t 
ot be sidLd or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the 135 
;arade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you 
massed them. We walk on even terms with their successors. 

:he roguish eye of J H, ever ready to be delivered of a 

'3st, almost invites a stranger to vie a repar ee with it. But 
l.hat insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry HO 
-whose person was a quadrate, his step_ massy and 

lephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory 



50 lamb's essays. 

and path-keeping, indivertible from liis way as a movii 
column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater < 

145 equals and superiors, who made a solitude of childrq 
wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, i! 
they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl w; 
as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirt 
or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, tl 

150 most rei)ulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating th 
natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majesti 
nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, h\\ 
a palmful at once, diving for it under the mighty flaps d 
his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red an^ 

155 angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, am 
by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so h 
paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; th 
pensive gentiUty of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, ani 

IGO had nothing but that and their benchership in common- 
In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a staunch tory 
Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry 
had a rough spinous humour — at the political confederate. ' 
of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom ol' 

165 the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffld 
Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of 
excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. 
I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When 

170 a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or 
otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over 
with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick 
little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light 
of natural understanding, of which he had an unconnnon 

175 share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed 
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child 
might pose him in a minute — indolent and procrastinating 
to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast 
application, in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted 

180 with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 51 

[ij dinner party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords 

, then — or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel 

V had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily 

gave him his cue. If there was anything which he could 

I speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — lie was to dine 185 

j at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of 

( her execution ; — and L. who ha<l a wary foresight of his 

I probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him 

. with great anxiety not in any possible manner to allude 

, to her story tliat day. S. promised faitlifidly to observe 190 

ii the injunction. He had not been seated in the parlour, 

j where the company was expecting the dinner summons, four 

[ minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got 

I up, looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles — 

an ordinary motion with him — observed, "it was a gloomy 195 

] day," and added, " IMiss Blandy must be hanged by this 

I time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. 

Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his 

, time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters 

! pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and 200 

j embarrassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. 

He never laughed. He had the same good fortune among 

j- the female world, — was a known toast with the ladies, and 

one or two are said to have died for love of him — I suppose, 

because he never trifled or talked gallantry with them, or 205 

paid them, indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a 

fine face and person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that 

should have shown them off with advantage to the women. 

His eye lacked lustre. — Not so, thought Susan P ; wIki, 

at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening 210 

time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, 

with tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because 
her friend had died that day — he, whom she had pursued 
with a hopeless passion, for the last forty years — a passion, 
which years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the long- 215 
resolved, yet gently -enforced, puttings off of unrelenting 
bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild 
Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven 1 



52 lamb's essays. 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that] 

220 name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, 
which gave him early those parsimonious habits which inj 
after-life never forsook him ; so that, with one windfall or I 
another, about the time I knew him he was master of four 
or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look, or i 

225 walk, wortli a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy j 
house opposite the pump in Serjeant's -inn, Fleet-street. 
J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what 
reason I divine not, at this day. C had an agreeable seat 
at North Cray, where he seldom spent above a day or 

230 two at a time in the summer ; but preferred, during the 
hot months, standing at his window in this dump, close, 
well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, "the maids drawing 
water all day long." I suspect he had his within-door 
reasons for the preference. Hie currns et anna fuere. He 

235 might think his treasures more safe. His house had the 
aspect of a strong-box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder 
rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes 
breed, Avho have brought discredit upon a character, which 
cannot exist Avithout certain admiralile points of steadiness 

240 and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but can- 
not, I susjiect, so easily despise him. Ey taking care of the 
pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a 
scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an 
immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000?. at 

245 once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His housekeeping 
was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentle- 
man. He would know who came in and who went out of 
his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to 
freeze. 

250 Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew 
what he was worth in the world ; and having but a com- 
petency for his rank, whicli his indolent habits were little 
calcidated to improve, might have sufi'ered severely if he 
had not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of 

255 everything. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his 
dresser, his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch, 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 53 

j.iditor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, 
ji-? failed in anything without expecting and fearing his 
f Jmonishing. He put himself almost too much in his 
f ,ands, had they not been the purest in the world. He 260 
fijisigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could 
jVer have forgotten for a moment that he was a servant. 
j I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible 
jind losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and "Avould 
trike." In the cause of the oppressed he never considered 265 
iiequalities, or calculated the number of his opponents. 
lie once wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of 
luality that had drawn upon him ; and pommelled him 
everely Avith the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered 
nsult to a female — an occasion upon which no odds against 270 
lim could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He 
yould stand next day bareheaded to the same person, 
nodestly to excuse his interference — for L. never forgot 
•ank, where something better was not concerned. L. was 
'ihe liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as 275 
jjrarrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a 
portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for 
.tiumorous poetry — next to S^vift and Prior — moulded heads 
in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of 
natural genius merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small 280 
cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls 
with equal facility ; made punch better than any man of his 
degree in England ; had the merriest quips and conceits ; 
and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as 
you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 285 
and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak 
Walton would have chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him 
in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, 
in the last sad stage of human Aveakness— " a remnant most 
forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye Avould light 290 
up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was 
greatest, he would say, in Bayes — "was upon the stage nearly 
throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." 
At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and 



54 lamb's essays. 

295 how lie came up a little boy from Lincoln to go to servic 
and how his mother cried at parting with him, and hoA 
he returned, after some few years' absence, in liis smart ne\ 
livery, to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, an<i 
could hardly be brought to believe that it was " her owi 

300 bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep 
till I have wished that sad second-childhood might have i 
mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the commoi 
mother of us all in no long time after received him gentl}) 
into hers. I 

305 With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon the 
terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to make! 
up a third. They did not walk linked arm in arm in those' 
days — " as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — < 
but generally with both hands folded behind them for state, 

310 or with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was 
a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that in 
his face Avhicli you could not term unhappiness ; it rather 
implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks Avere 
colourless even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, 

315 r(>sembling (but without his sourness) that of our great 
philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could 
never make out what he tvas. Contemporary with these, 
but subordinate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity ; 
he wallced burly and square — in imitation, I think, of 

320 Coventry ; howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his 
prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the 
strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a 
brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treasurer- 
ship came to be audited, the following singular charge 

325 was unanimously disallowed by the bench : " Item, dis- 
bursed Mr. Allen the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuif 
to poison the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was 
old Barton — a jollj negation, who took upon him the 
ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, 

330 where the benchers dine — answering to the combination 
rooms, at College — much to the easement of his less 
Epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — Then 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 55 

E'iiJead, and Twopeuy — Read, good-humoured and personable 
171— Twopeiiy, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in jests 
'iipon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated 33f) 
lund fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather 
:j)f later date) and his singular gait, which was performed 
J[)y tliree steps and a jumj) regularly succeeding. The steps 
I were little efforts, like tliat of a child beginning to walk; 

he jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. 340 
Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could 
I never discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
Bjto answer tlie purpose any better than common walking. 
3 The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. 
= It was a trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him upon 345 
- his leanness, and hail him as brother Lusty ; but W. had no 
relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard 
that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything 
: had oifended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he was 
called — was of this period. He had the reputation of 350 
possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of 
his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate 
portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of 
the cook applying to him, with much formality of apology, 
for instructions how to write down edge bone of beef in his 355 
bill of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in 
the world did. He decided the orthograj)hy to be — as I 
have given it — fortifying his authoi'ity with such anatomical 
reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and 
happy. Some do spell it yet, perversely, aitch bone, from 360 
a fanciful resemblance between its shape and that of the 
aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten Mingay 
with the. iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had 
lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied it with a 
grappling-hook, which he wielded with a tolerable" adroitness. 365 
I detected the substitute, before I was old enough to reason 
"whether it were artificial or not. I remember the astonish- 
ment it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking 
person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an 
emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in the forehead 370 



56 lamb's essays. 

of ]\Iicliael Angolo's Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or 
(lid till very lately) in tlie costume of the reign of George i 
the Second, closes my imperfect recollections of the old 
benchers of the Inner Temple. 

375 Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled 1 Or, if the like of 
you exist, why exist they no more for me 1 Ye inexplicable, 
lialf-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear 
away the preternatural mist, l)right or gloomy, that en- 
shrouded you 1 Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, 

380 who made up to me — to my childish eyes — the mythology 
of the Temple 1 In tliose days I saw Gods, as " old men 
covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the 
dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies 
and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of 

385 childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent 
or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exaggeration will 
be busy there, and vital — from every-day forms educing the 
unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there 
will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the 

390 darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and 

while dreams, reducing cliildhood, shall be left, imagination 

shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. 

P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel 

Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the 

395 erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought 
that he had been a bachelor ! This gentleman, R. IST. 
informs me, married young, and losing his lady in chiklbed, 
within the first year of their union, fell into a deep melan- 
choly, from the effects of which, probaljly, he never 

400 thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does this place 
his rejection (O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan 

P , unravelling into lieauty certain peculiarities of this 

very shy and retiring character ! — Henceforth let no one 
receive the narratives of Elia for true records ! They are, in 

405 truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not verities 
— or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of 
history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and 
would have done better perhaps to have consulted that 



THE OLD BEXCllERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE, 57 

gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to 
press. But the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old 410 
and his new masters — would but have been puzzled at the 
indecorous lilierties of Elia. The good man wots not, per- 
ad venture, of the licence which Mayazines have arrived at 
in this plain-s]; )eaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence 
beyond the Ge)itleman's — his furthest monthly excursions in 415 
this nature having Ijeen long contined to the holy ground of 
honest Urhaiis obituary. May it bo long before his own 
name shall help to swell those columns of unenvied flattery! 
— Meantime, ye New iifiichers of the Iinier Temple, 
cherish him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of human 420 
creatures. Sliould inlirmities overtake him — he is yet in 
green and vigorous senility — make allowances for them, 
remembering that "ye yourselves are old." So may the 
Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still 
flourish ! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your 425 
church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in default of 
more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your 
walks ! so may the fresh-coloured, and cleanly nursery-maid, 
who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately 
gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, 430 
reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the yomikers of 
this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the 
same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia 
gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised the parade 
before ye I 435 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION 



CASTING a preparatory glance at the bottom of tliis 
article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory ' 
eye, (wliich, while it reads, seems as though it read not,) 
never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before 
5 he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet 

methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, T17io is Elia? 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half- 
forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old 
house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you 

10 have already set me down in your mind as one of the self- 
same college a votary of the desk — a notched and crept 

scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick 
people are said to do, through a quill. 

Well, I do agnize something of the sort, I confess that it 

15 is my humour, my fancy — in the fore-part of the day, when 
the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation — 
(and none better than such as at first sight seems most 
abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some 
good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, 

20 cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otlierwise. In the 
first place * * * and then it sends you home with such 
increased appetite to your books * * * not to say, tliat 
your outside sheets, and waste wra})pers of foolscap, do re- 
ceive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression 

25 of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the very parings of a 
counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. 
Tbe enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning 
among the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks and curvets 

30 so at its ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 59 

lissertation. — It feels its promotion. ... So that you see, 
ipon the whole, the literary dignity of Elia is very little, if 
it all, compromised in the condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities 
Incidental to the life of a puhlic office, I would be thought 35 
jlind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able 
,0 pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, in 
he fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing- 
iway-with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and 
sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons, — the red- 40 
'etter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead- 
'■etter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous ui old times 

—we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I 
vv^as at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the 45 
same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. There hung 
Peter in his uneasy posture holy Bartlemy in the trouble- 
some act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. 

1 honoured them all, and could ahnost have Avept the 

defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to keep holy 50 
lUemorics sacred : — only methought I a little grudged at the 
coalition of the hette?- Jiide with Simon — clubbing (as it were) 
their sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day be- 
tween them — as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's 55 
life — "far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an 
almanac in those days. I could have told you such a samt's- 
day falls out next week, or the week after. Peradventure the 
Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six 
years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I httle better than one 60 
of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the wisdom 
of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observa- 
tion of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only 
in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holi- 

nesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded 65 

but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the man to 
decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical authority 1 



60 lamb's essays. 



I 



am plain EHa — no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — thotip 
at present in the thick of their books, here in the heart 

70 learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student.- 1 
such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his youu 
years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere 
so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one ( 

75 other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this tin 
of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I can take rn 
walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or staiii 
ing I jilcase. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up p:if 
opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-boll, and dream tin 

80 it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or 
Servitor. Wlien the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentlema 
Commoner. In graver moments I proceed T Taster of Art: 
Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectablj 
character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed 

85 makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pasfj 
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go abou^ 
in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Churcl 
reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing 
short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

90 The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the tal 
trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! The halls deserted 
and with open doors inviting one to slip in uuperceived, anc 
pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress 
(that should have been ours), whose portrait seems to smile 

95 upon their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for theii! 
own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the butteries,! 
and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality : tlie immense 
caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-places, cordial recesses ; oven^' 
whose first pies were baked four centuries ago ; and spits 
100 which have cooked for Cliaucer ! Not the meanest minister 
among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagina- 
tion, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple ! ' 
Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that 
being nothing, art everything ! When thou icert, thou wert 
105 not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter 



OXFORD m THE VACATION. 61 

uiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to Avith blind 
leration; thou tliyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern/ 
lat mystery lurks in this retroversion % or what half 

fhnses* are we, that cannot look forward with the same 
latry with which we for ever revert. The mighty future 110 

15 nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being 

,1 What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun rose as brightly 
,i n as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. 
Iiy is it we can never hear mention of them without an ll.j 
ompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had 
j.imed the face of tilings, and that our ancestors wandered 
.'and fro groping ! 

A-bove all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride 
,i solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, 120 

T shelves ■ 

What a place to be in is an old library ! It seems as though 
j the souls of all the writers, that have beqi;eathcd their 
lOurs to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some 
rmitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to pro- I'J.'S 

16 the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon 
^lodgG a shade. I seem to iidiale learning, walking amid 

uir foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented cover- 
ijs is fi'agrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples 
jiich grew amid the happy orchard. 130 

I Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of 
j3S.f Those varioi led! ones, so tempting to the more 
iidite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am 
Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses 
ght have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these curio- 135 
ies to Porson and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I found 
sy as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out of 
ne seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. With long 
ring, he is grown almost into a book. He stood as 
ssive as one by the side of the old shelves. I longed to MO 

* "Januses of one face." — Sir Thomas Browne. 
t See Note at the end of the essay. 



i 



62 lamb's essays. 

new-coat him in rnssia, and assign him his place. He migl 
have m-ustered for a tall Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. K 
inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I apprehen(; 

145 is consumed in journeys between them and Cliiford's-inn- 
where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken u 
his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous assembly v 
attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin o 
the law, among whom he sits " in calm and sinless peace. 

150 The fangs of the law pierce him not — the winds of litigatiot' 
blow over his humble chambers — the hard sheriff's offic( 
moves his hat as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy 
touches him — -none thinks of offering violence or injustice ti] 
him— you would as soon " strike an alxstract idea." 

155 D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course c^ 
laborious years, in an investigation into all curious mattel 
connected with the two Universities ; and has lately hi 

upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , b; 

which he hopes to settle some disputed points — particular! 

IGO tliat long controversy between them as to priority of fouudn 
tion. The ardour with which he engages in these libera 
pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all tlie encouragement 

it deserved, either here or at C . Your caputs, and heads 

of colleges, care less than anybod}^ else about these questions.^ 

165 — -Contented to suck the milky fountains of their Alma 
Maters, without inquiring into the venerable gentlewoman's' 
years, they rather hold such curiosities to be impertinent — ' 
nnreverend. They have their good glebe lands in manv, 
and care not much to rake into the title deeds. I gather, at' 

170 least, so much from other sources, for 1). is not a man to' 
conqilain. 

D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted him.' 
A priori it was not very probable that we should have met in! 
Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had I accosted 

175 him on the sudden in his own walks in Clifford's Inn, or in 
the Temple. In addition to a provoking short-sightedness 
(the effect of late studies and watchings at the midnight 
oil), D. is the most absent of men. He made a call the other 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. bu 

Worning at our friend M.'s in Bedford Square; and, finding 
» obody^'at lionie, was usliered into the hall, where, asking for 180 
,,en and ink, with great exactitude of purpose he enters me 
'lis name in the hook — which ordinarily lies ahout in such 
.laces, to record the failures of the untimely or unfortunate 
l-isitor, and takes his leave with many ceremonies, and pro- 
fessions of regret. Some two or three hours after, his 185 
;valking destuues returned him into the same neighbourhood 
'.gain, and again the quiet image of the fireside circle at M.'s 
-Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. 
i.t-her side— striking irresistibly on his fancy, he makes 
Another call (forgetting that they were "certainly not to 190 
■eturn from the country before that day week"), and dis- 
qijiointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper as before ; 
igain the bot.k is brought, and in the line just above that ni 
i.vliich he is about to print his second name (his re-script)— 
lis first name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another 195 
|5osia, or as if a man should suddenly encounter his own 
j duplicate !- The eiiect may be conceived. D. made many a 
rood resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he 
will not keep tliem too rigorously. 

For with G. L).— to be absent from the body, is sometimes 200 
|/not to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At 
I the very time when, personally encountering thee, he passes 

on with no recognition or, being stopped, starts like a 

thing surprised— at that moment, reader, he is on Mount 
Xabor— or Parnassus— or co-sphered with Plato— or, with 205 
Harrington, framing "immortal commonwealths" — devising 
some plan of amelioration to thy country or thy species 

. peradventure meditating some individual kindness or 

courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning con- 
sciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at thy 210 
obtruded personal presence. 

D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 
house of "Pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish fanatic 
schoolmaster at * * ^S at a salary of eight pounds per 
annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, he 215 
never received above half in all the laborious years he served 



64 lamb's essays. 

this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, 
staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled 
him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, 

220 Dr. * * * would take no immediate notice, but after supi)cr, 
when the school was called together to evensong, he would 
never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, 
and the corrui)tion of the heart occasioned through the desire 
of them — ending with " Lord, Keep Thy servants, above all 

225 things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and 
raiment, lot us therewithal be content. Give me Agur's 
wish" — and the like — which, to the little auditory, sounded 
like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but 
to poor D. was a receipt in full for that quarter's demand 

230 at least. 

And D. has been underworking for himself ever since ; — 
drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers — wast- 
ing his tine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, 
and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning 

235 which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who 
have not the heart to sell themselves to the best advantage. 
He has published poems, which do not sell, because their 
character is unobtrusive, like his own, and because he has 
been too much absorbed in ancient literature to know what 

240 the popular mark in poetry is, even if he could have hit it. 
And, therefore, his verses are properly what ho terms them, 
crochets; voluntaries; odes to liberty and spring ; effusions; 
little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables and 
window-seats at parting from friends' houses ; and from all 

245 the inns of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or 
but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of 
kindness halt a little behind the strong lines in fashion in 
this excitement-loving age, his prose is the best of the sort in 
the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own 

250 healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of con- 
versation. 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in such 
places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of 
his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, or liarrowgate. TcU 



j . OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 65 

bam and the Isis are to him "better than all the waters of 255 
Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as 
: me of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; and 
when he goes about with you to show you the balls and 
iolleges, you tbink you have with you the Interpreter at tlie 
'House Beautiful. 2C0 

I Note. — In the London Magazine was appended the following note : 
—"There is something to me repugnant at any time in written hand. 
The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought 
jf the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty — as springing up with all its 
oarts absolute — till, in an evil hour, I was shown the original copy of 
.t, together with the other minor poems of its author, in the library 
)f Trinity, kept like some treasure, to be proud of. I wish they had 
Lhrown them in the Cam, or sent them after the latter Cantos of 
Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine 
things in their ore ! interlined, corrected ! as if their words were 
OQortal, alterable, displaccable at pleasure ! as if they might have been 
>therwise, and just as good ! as if inspiration were made up of parts, 
ind these fluctuating, successive, inditierent ! I will never go into the 
rtforkshop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture 
till it is fairly off the easel : no, not if Kaphael were to be alive again, 
ind painting another Galatea," 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY 

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have saiil j 
so before) at one or other of the Universities. Next tn 
these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as th( 
neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, on the banks, 
5 of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my coushi 
contrives to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, to u 
watering-place. Old attachments cling to her in spite of 
experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, 
duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourne a third, 

10 and are at this moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings ! 
— and all because we were happy many years ago for a brief 
week at Margate. That was our first sea-side experiment, and 
many circamstauccs combined to make it the most agreeable 
holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and 

15 we had never been from home so long together in company. 
Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy. with thy weather- 
beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations — 
ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water niceness of the 
modern steam-packet 1 To the winds and waves thou com- 

20 mittedst thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic 
fumes, and spells, and boiling caldrons. With the gales 
of heaven thou wentest swimmingly ; or, when it was their 
pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy course 
was natural, not forced, as in a hot-bed ; nor didst thou go 

25 poisoning the breath of ocean with sidphureous smoke — a 
great sea chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep ; or 
liker to that fire-god parching up Scaiiumder. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy 
reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like 

30 contempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city 
would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of 
this or that strange naval implement *? 'S])ecially can I forget 
thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge between 
us and them, conciliating interjireter of their skill to our 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 67 

simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land ! — 35 
;v^hose sailor-trousers did not more convincingly assure thee 
;o be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy white cap, 
.md whiter apron over them, with thy neat-figured practice in 
'■;hy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland 
jiurture heretofore — a master cook of Eastcheap ? How 40 
'jusily didst thou ply thy multifarious occui^ation, cook, 
'jnariner, attendant, chamberlain : here, there, like another 
^A.riel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with 
kindlier ministrations — not to assist the tempest, but, as if 
^, touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the 45 
Ijualms which that untried motion might haply raise in our 
irude land-fancies. And when the o'er- washing billows drove 
;.is beloAv deck (for it was far gone in October, and we had 
'^tiff and blowing weather), how did thy officious ministerings, 
still catering for our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and 50 
ihy more cordial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the 
[confinement of tliy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor 
[vei'y inviting, little cabin? 

With these additanients to boot, we had on board a fellow- 
passenger, whose discourse in verity miglit have beguiled a 5') 
longer voyage than we meditated, and ha\e made mirth and 
,woniler abound as far as the Azores. He was a dark, 
Spanish-complex ioned young man, remarkably handsome, 
with an officer-like assurance, and an insiippressible volu- 
bility of assertion. He was, in fact, the gTeatest liar I had GO 
met with then, or since. He was none of your hesitating, 
half story-tellers (a most painful description of mortals) who 
go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as 
they see you can swallow at a time— the nibl^ling pickpockets 
of your patience — but one who committed downright, day- C5 
light depredations upon his neigliltour's faith. He did not 
stand shivering u{)on the brink, but was a hearty, thorough- 
paced liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your 
credulity. I partly believe, he made pretty sure of his com- 
pany. Not many rich, not many wise, or learned, composed at 70 
that time the common stowage of a Margate packet. We were, 
I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies 



G8 lamb's essays. 

give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury, or Watling street, af 
tliat time of day could have supplied. There might be am 
75 exception or two among u^, but I scorn to make any in 
vidious distinctions among such a jolly, companionable ship's 
company, as those were whom I sailed with. Something 
too must be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the confi- 
dent fellow told us half the legends on land, which he. 
80 favoured us with on the other element, I flatter myself the 
good sense of most of us would have revolted. But we were 
in a new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and the 
time and place disposed us to the reception of any prodigious 
marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated from my memory 
85 much of his wild fablings ; and the rest would appear but 
dull, as written, and to be road on shore. He had been 
Aide-de-camp (among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a 
]Vrsian Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the head of 
the King of Carimania on horseback. He, of course, married 
90 the Prince's daughter. I forget what Tinlucky turn in the 
politics of that court, combining with the loss of his consort, 
was the reason of his t^uitting Persia; but, with the rapidity 
of a magician, he transported himself, along with his hearers, 

• back to England, where we still found him in the confidence 
95 of great ladies. There was some story of a princess — Elizabeth, 
if I remember — having intrusted to his care an extraordinary 
casket of jewels, upon some extraordinary occasion — but, as 
I am not certain of the name or cii'cumstance at this distance 
of time, I must leave it to the Royal daughters of England 

100 to settle the honour among themselves in private. I cannot 
call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I perfectly 
remember, that in the course of his travels he had seen a 
phoenix ; and he obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, 
that there is l)ut one of that species at a time, assuring us 

105 that tliey were not uncommon in some parts of Upper Egypt. 
Hitherto he had found the most implicit listeners. His 
dreaming fancies had transported us beyond the " ignorant 
present." But when (still hardying more and more in his 
triumphs over our simplicity) he went on to afiirm that he had 

110 actually sailed through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 69 

it really became necessary to make a stand. And here I 
must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of 
our party, a youtli, that had hitherto been one of his most 
' deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold 
' to assure the gentleman that there must be some mistake, as 115 
I "the Colossus in question had been destroyed long since;" 
'' to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was 
1 obliging enough to concede thus much, that " the figure was 
■' indeed a little damaged." This was the only opposition he 
' met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he 120 
I proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared 
'j to swallow with still more complacency than ever, — con- 
firmed, as it were, by the extreme candour of that concession, 
I With these prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in sight 
\ of the Eeculvers, which one of our own company (having been 125 
I the voyage before) immediately recognising, and pointing out 
to us, Avas considered by us as no ordinary seaman. 
I All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a difi'ercnt 
j character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, 
and very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile; 130 
and, if he caught now and then some snatches of these Avild 
legends, it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern 
I him. The waves to him whispered more pleasant stories. 
He was as one, being with us, but not of us. He heard the 
bell of dinner ring without stirring; and when some of us 135 
pulled out our private stores — our cold meat and our salads 
— he produced none, and seemed to want none. Only a 
solitary biscuit he had laid in ; provision for the one or two 
days and nights, to which these vessels then were oftentimes 
obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer acquaintance 140 
with him, which he seemed neither to court nor decline, we 
learned that he was going to Margate, with the hope of being 
admitted into the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His 
disease was a scrofula, which appeared to have eaten all over 
him. He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and when we 145 
asked him whether he had any friends where he was going, 
he replied "he had no friends." 

These pleasant, and some mournful passages with the first 



70 LAMB*S ESSAYS. 

sight of the sea, co-operating with youth, and a sense of holi- i 

150 days, and out-of-door adventure, to me that had been pent up 
in populous cities for many months before, — have left upon 
my mind the fragrance as of summer days gone by, bequeath- 
ing nothing but their remembrance for cold and wintry hours 
to chew upon. 

155 Will .it be thought a digression (it may spare some un- 
welcome comparisons), if I endeavour to account for the 
dissatisfadlon which I have heard so many persons confess 
to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this occasion), 
at the sight of the sea for the first time ? I think tlu' 

160 reason usually given — referring to the incapacity of actual 
objects for satisfying our preconceptions of them — scarcely 
goes deep enough into the question. Let the same person 
see a lion, an elephant, a mountain, for the first time in 
his life, and he shall perhaps feel himself a little mortifietl. 

1G5 The things do not fdl up the space, which the idea of them 
seemed to take up in his mind. Eut they have still a 
correspondency to his first notion, and in time grow up 
to it, so as to produce a very similar impression • enlarging 
themselves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the 

170 sea remains a disappointment.- — Is it not, that in the 
latter we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I 
am afraid, by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not a 
definite object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain com- 
l»assal)le by the eye, but ail the sea at once, the commensurate 

175 ANTAGONIST OP THE EARTH? I do not say we tell ourselves 
so much, but the craving of the mind is to be satisfied witli 
nothing less. I will suppose the case of a young person of 
fifteen (as I then was) knowing nothing of the sea, but from 
description. He comes to it for the first time — all that he 

ISO has been reading of it all his life, and that the most enthusi- 
astic part of life, — all he has gathered from narratives of 
Avaudering seamen, — what he has gained from true voyages, 
and what he cherishes as credulously from romance and 
poetry, — crowding their images, and exacting strange tributes 

185 from expectation. — He thinks of the gi'cat deep, and of 
those who go down unto it; of its thousand isles, and of 



I THE OLD MARGATE IIOY. 71 

j.lie vast continents it washes ; of its receiving the mighty 
'Plate, or Orellana, into its bosom, without disturbance, or 
:iense of augmentation ; of Biscay swells, and the mariner 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 190 

Incessant labouring round the stormy Cape ; 

')f fatal rocks, and the "still-vexed Bermoothes;" of great 
vhirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, and sumless 
'measures swallowed up in the unrestoring depths ; of fishes 
md quaint monsters, to which all that is terrible on earth — 195 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
j Compared with the creatures in the sea's entral ; 

')f naked savages, and Juan Fernandez; of pearls, and shells ; 
)f coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of mermaids' grots — 
' I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to bo 200 
shown all tliese wonders at once, but he is imder the tyranny 
3f a miglity faculty, wliich haunts him with confused hints 
I Mid shadows of all these; and when the actual ol»ject opens 
[arst i;i3on him, seen (in tame weather, too, most likely) from 
l^ur unromantic coasts — a speck, a slip of sea-water, as it -JO.'i 
[shows to him — what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and 
3ven diminutive entertainment? Or if he has come to it 
from the mouth of a river, was it much more than the river 
widening ? and, even out of sight of land, Avhat had he but a 
flat watery horizon about him, nothing comparable to the 210 
vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar object, seen daily 
without dread or amazement? — Who, in similar circum- 
stances, has not been tempted to exclaini with Charoba, in 
the poem of Gebir — 

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ? 215 

I love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque Port 
is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting out their 
starved foliage from between the horrid fissures of dusty 
innutritious rocks ; which the amateur calls " verdure to the 
edge of the sea." I require woods, and they show me 220 
stunted coppices. I cry out for the water-brooks, and pant 
for fresh streams, and inland murmurs. I cannot stand all 
day on the naked beach, watching the capricious hues of the 



72 lamb's essays. 

sea, shifting like the colours of a dying mullet. I am tired 
of looking out at the windows of this island-prison. I wouL 

225 fain retire into the interior of my cage. While I gaze upon 
the sea, I want to he on it, over it, across it. It hinds me in 
with chains, as of iron. My thouglits are ahroad. I shoukL 
not so feel in Staffordshire. There is no home for me here.' 
There is no sense of home at Hastings. It is a place of fugi- 

230 tive resort, an heterogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and 
stock-brokers, Amphitrites of the town, and misses thai 
coquet with the Ocean. If it were what it was in its primi- { 
tive shape, and what it ought to have remained, a fair, i 
honest, fishing-town, and no more, it were something — with j 

235 a few straggling fishermen's huts scattered about, artless as ; 
its Clio's, and with their materials filched from them, it were i 
something. I could abide to dwell with Meshech ; to assort \ 
with fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, or I dream 
there are, many of this latter occupation here. Their faces 

240 become the place. I like a smuggler. He is the only honest 
thief. He robs nc tiling but the revenue, — an abstraction I 
never greatly cared about. I could go out wdth them in 
their mackarel boats, or about their less ostensible business, 
with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor victims 

245 to monotony, who from day to day pace along the beach, in 
endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit country- 
men — townsfolk or brethren perchance — whistling to the 
sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their only 
solace), who under the mild name of preventive service, 

250 keep up a legitimated civil warfare in the deplorable absence 
of a foreign one, to show their detestation of run hollands, and 
zeal for old England. But it is the visitants from town, that 
come here to say that they have been here, with no more 
relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace might l)e sup- 

255 posed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish 
dace in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself 
here, as for them. What can they want here? if they 
had a true relish of the ocean, why have they brought all 
this land luggage with them 1 or why pitch their civilised 

260 tents in the desert 1 What mean these scanty book-rooms — 



j THE OLD MARGATE HOT. 73 

iaarine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea weve, 
iS they would have us believe, a book, " to read strange 
uatter in?" what are their foolish concert-rooms, if they 
;ome, as they would fain be thouglit to do, to listen to the 
nusic of the waves? All is false and hollow pretension. 265 
They come, because it is the fasliion, and to spoil the nature 
')f the place. They are, mostly, as I have said, stock-brokers; 
Dut I liave watched the better sort of thcin — now and then, 
m honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of Lis 
' leart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, to taste the 270 
hea breezes. I always know the date of their arrival. It is 
'basy to see it in their countenance. A day or two they go 
^wandering on the shingles, picking up cockle-shells, and 
'thinking them great things ; but, in a poor week, imagination 
'slackens: they begin to discover that cockles produce no 275 
'pearls, and then — then ! — if I could interpret for the 
pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage to confess 
lit themselves), how gladly would they exchange their sea- 
side rambles for a Sunday-walk on the green-sward of their 
[accustomed Twickenham meadows! 'J.so 

I would ask of one of these sea-chanued emigrants, wIkj 
think they truly love the sea, with its Vv'ild usages, what 
would tlieir feelings be, if some of the unsophisticated 
aborigines of this place, encouraged by their courteous ques- 
tionings here, should venture, on the faith of such assured 285 
sympathy between them, to return the visit, and come up to 
see — London. I must imagine them with their fishing-tackle 
on their back, as we carry our town necessaries. What a 
sensation would it cause in Lothbury. What vehement 
laugliter would it not excite among 290 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard-street I 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born subjects can feel 
their true and natural nourishment at these sea-places. Nature, 
where she does not mean us for mariners and vagabonds, bids 
us stay at home. The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. 295 
I am not half so good-natured as by the milder waters of my 
natural river. I wovtld exchange these sea-gulls for swans, 
9,nd scud a swallow for ever about the banks of Thamesis. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 

Sera tanien respexit 
Libertas. ViRGll/. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefe. 

IF peradventure, Reader, it has been tliy lot to waste the 
golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the 
irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy prison days 
prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and 
5 silver hairs, without hope of release or respite ; to have 
lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to 
remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood ; then, 
and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance. 
It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the 

10 desk in Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at 
fourteen from the al)undant playtime, and the frequently- 
intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and 
sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance at the counting-house. 
But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually 

15 became content — doggedly contented, as wild animals in 
cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself ; but Sundays, 
admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of 
worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for 

20 days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is a 
gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weiglit in the 
air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the 
ballad-singers — the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. 
Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. 

25 Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of 
knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 75 

';radesnien, which make a week-day saunter through the less 
Dusy jiarts of the metropolis so delightful — are shut out, 
^0 book-stalls deliciously to idle over — no busy faces to 
:ecreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing 30 
oy — the very face of business a charm by contrast to his 
temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but lui- 
liappy countenances — or half-happy at best — of emancipated 
prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and there a 
servant-maid tliat has got leave to go out, who, slaving all 35 
the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of 
jsnjoying a free hour ; and livelily expressing the hollowness 
|0f a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on 
that day look anything but comfortable. 

IJut besides Suudaj'S I had a day at Easter, and a day at 40 
(Christmas, with a full week in the sunnner to go and air 
imyself i)i my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was 
a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I 
'believe, ah me kept me up through the year, and made my 
durance toleraUe. But Avhen the week came round, did the 45 
glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me 'i or 
rather was it not a series of seven inieasy days, spent in 
restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find 
oiit how to make the most of them 1 Where was the quiet, 
where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was 50 
vanished. I was at tlie desk again, counting upon the fifty- 
one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another 
snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw 
something of an illumination upon the darker side of my 
captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have 55 
sustained my thraldom. 

Independently of the rigoui's of attendance, I have ever 
been haunted with a sense (jierhaps a mere caprice) of in- 
capacity for business. This, during my latter years, had 
increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all the lines 60 
of my countenance. ]\Iy health and my good spirits flagged. 
I had p(;rpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I should 
be found unequcal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served 
over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with 



76 lamb's essays. 

65 terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and 
the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of 
emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as 
it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon 

70 tlie trouble legible in my countenance ; but I did not know 
that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, 
when, on the tifth of last month, a day ever to be remem- 
bered by me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling 

me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and 

75 frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly 
made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was 
afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service. 
He spoke some words of course to hearten me, and there 
the matter rested. A whole week I remained labouring 

80 under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my 
disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle against 
myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A 
week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily 
believe, in my Avhole life, when on the evening of the 12th 

85 of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home 
(it might be al)Out 8 o'clock) I received an awful summons 
to attend the presence of the Avhule asseniUed firm in the 
formidable back parlour. I thought now my time is surely 
come ; I have done for myself ; I am going to be told that 

90 they have no longer occasion for me. L , I coidd see, 

smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to 

me — when, to my utter astonishment, B , the eldest 

partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of my 
services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of 

95 the time (tlie deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? 
I protest I never had the confidence to think as nnich). He 
went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain 
time of life (how my heart panted !), and asking me a few 
questions as to the amount of my own property, of which I 
100 have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his three 
partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from 
the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 77 

jjjie amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary — a 
,f'|agnificent offer ! I do not know what I answered between 
, irprise and gratitude, but it was understood that I accepted 105 
'l leir proposal, and I was told that I was free from that hour 
I j I leave their service. I stam'mered out a bow, and at just 
, !,in minutes after eight I went home — for ever. This noble 
iljnefit— gratitude forbids me to conceal their names — I owe 
' ) the kindness of the most munificent firm in the world — 110 
lie house of Boldero, Merry weather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. 

Edo Pcrjjciua 1 

i For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I 
jould only ai)preliend my felicity; I Avas too confused to 
I'aste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, 115 
nd knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a 
prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty 
i' ears' confinement, I could scarce trust myself with myself. 
! .t was like passing out of Time into Eternity—for it is a 
';ort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to hiinself. 120 
';t seemed to me that I had more time on my liands than I 
Imild ever manage. Erom a poor man, poor in Time, I was 
iaiddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could sec no end 
|)f my possessions; I -panted some stewaid, ov judicious 
Ijailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let 125 
i'me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, 
|aor without weighing their own resources, to forego their 
hustoraary employment all at once, for there may be danger 
in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources arc 
sufficient; and now that those first githly raptures have 130 
subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of 
my condition. I am in no hiiny. Having all holidays, I 
am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, 
I could walk it away ; but I do wA walk all day long, as I 
used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a day, 135 
to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I 
could read it away; but I do not read in that violent measure, 
with which, having no time my own but candle-light Time, 
I used to weary out my head and eyesight in by-gone winters. 



78 lamb's essays. 

HO I walk, read, or scribble (as now), just when the fit sc 
me. I no longer hunt after pleasure : I let it come to . 
I am like the man 

-that 's born, and has his years come to him, 



In some green desert 

145 _ "Years!" you will say; "what is this superannua 
simpleton calculating upon '2 He has already told us ht 
past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nonrinally fifty years, but deduct . 
of them the hours which I have lived to other people, a 
150 not to myself, and you will find me still a young fell 
For that is the only true Time, which a man can propc 
call his own, that which he has all to himself; the r. 
though in some sense he may be said to live it, is ot! 
people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, L- 
155 or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. ]\Iy i 
next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any prec( 
ing thirty. 'T is a fair rule-of-three sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which lieset me at the coi 
mencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are n 
160 yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had interveuj 
since I quitted the Counting-house. I could not conceive 
it as an affiiir of yesterday. The partners, and the cler 
with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hoi 
in each day of the year, been closely associated— ])eing si 
165 denly removed from them — they seemed as dead to ii 
There is a fine passage which may serve to illustrate tl 
fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of 
friend's death. 

'T was but just now he went away ; i 

170 I have not since had time to shed a tear ; 

And yet the distance does the same appear, 
As if he liad been a tliousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to g| 

175 among them once or twice since; to visit my old deskj 

fellows— my co-bi-ethr.n of the quill— that I had left belov,] 

in the state militant. Not aU the kindness with which thej 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 79 

received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, 
Iwhich I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked 
some of our old jokes, but methought they went oif but 180 
faintly. My old desk ; the peg where I hung my hat were 
appropriated to another. 1 knew it must be, but I could not 

:take it kindly. D 1 take me, if I did not feel some 

'remorse — beast, if I had not — at quitting my old compeers, 
the faithful partners of my toils for six-and-thirty years, that 185 
smoothed for mc Avith their jokes and conundrums the 
ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged 
then, after all 1 or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is too 
late to repent; and I also know that these suggestions are a 
common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my 190 
heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt 
us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time 
before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, 
old cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come 

among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch , 195 

dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, 

and gentlemanly ! PI — '■ — , officious to do, and to volunteer, 
good services ! — and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for 
a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately house of Mer- 
chants ; with thy lal)yrinthine passages, and light-excluding, 200 
pent-up offices, where candles for one-half the year supplied 
the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to my 
weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, 
and not in the obscure collection of some wandering book- 
seller, my "works !" There let them rest, as I do from my 205 
labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than 
ever Aquinas left, and f uU as useful ! My mantle I bequeath 
among ye. 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first com- 
munication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, 210 
but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it 
was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was 
left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak 
eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains, 
forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my 215 



80 lamb's essays. 

apparel, I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellula: 
discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the 
world. I am now as if I had never been other than my 
own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to 

220 do wliat I please. I find myself at 1 1 o'clock in tlie day in 
Bond-street, and it seems to me that I have been saunterinp 
there at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soliu, 
to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years 
a collector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find 

225 myself before a fine picture in the morning. Was it ever 
otherwise? What is become of Fish-street HilH Whei\' 
is Fenchurch-street 1 Stones of old Mincing Lane, which 1 
have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, > 
to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting] 

230 flints now vocal 1 I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. 
It is 'Change time, and I am strangely among the Elgin j 
marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ventured to compare |; 
the change in my condition to a passing into another world. ,' 
Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all 

235 distinction of season. I do not know the day of the week 
or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt 
by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its 
distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had 
my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. 

240 The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the 
whole of it, aSecting my appetite, spirits, etc. The phantom 
of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a 
load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has 
washed that Ethiop white ? Wliat is gone of Black Monday 1 

245 All days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate 
failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my 
sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest 
quantity of pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week- 
day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging 

250 the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the 
holiday. I have time for everything. I can visit a sick 
friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation when 
ho is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 81 

take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May- 
'aorning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor 255 
Ixudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and 
;aring ; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the small 
'.ternal round — and what is it all for 1 A man can never 
lave too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I 

1 little son, I would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should 2(')0 
\ io nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element 

IS long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life 
contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come and 
'swallow up those accursed cotton-mills? Take me that 
lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down 265 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer ******j clerk to the Firm of, &c. I am 
Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am 
already come to be known by my vacant face and careless 
gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled 270 
purpose. I walk about ; not to and from. They tell me a 
certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with 
my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. 
I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a 
newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera. Ojms 275 
operahim est. I have done all that I came into tlus world 
to do. I have worked task-work, and have the rest of the 
day to myself. 



DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE 

CHILDEEN love to listen to stories about their elders,! 
when they were children ; to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary gi'eat-uncle or grandame, 
whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little 
5 ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their 
great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in 
Norfolk (a hundred times bigger tlian that in which they 
and papa lived), which had been the scene — so at least it 
was generally believed in tliat part of the country — of the 

10 tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar Avith 
from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is 
that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle 
was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney- 
piece of the gTeat hall, the whole story doAvn to the Eobiu 

15 Redbreasts ; tdl a foolish rich person pulled it down to set 
up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no 
story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's 
looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on 
to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother 

20 Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, thoiigh 
she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had 
only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be 
said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the 
owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable 

25 mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining 
county ; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had 
been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in 
a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and 



DREAM-CHILDREN. 83 

|(?as nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped 
md carried away to the owner's other house, where they 30 
yere set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to 
;arry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, 
md stick tliom uj) in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. 
liere John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be foolish 
ndeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her 35 
'uneral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and 
;ome of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many 
niles round, to show their respect for her memory, because 
'ihe had been such a good and religious woman; so good 
indeed that she knew all the Psalter by heart, ay, and a 40 
'freat part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread 
. ler hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person 
)heir great -grandmother Field once was ; and how in her 
vouth she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little 
iglit foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my l.O 
J coking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in 
.he county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and 
ijowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her 
l^ood spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, 
pecause she was so good and religious. Then I told how she 50 
l.vas used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great 
' one house ; and how she believed that an apparition of two 
nfants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down 
■,he great staircase near where she slept, but she said " those 
unocents would do her no harm"; and how frightened T .55 
ised to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep 
.vith me, because I was never half so good or religious as 
ihe — and yet I never saw the infants. Hero John expanded 
dl his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told 
low good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the 60 
^jreat house in the holidays, where I in particular used to 
spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts 
Df the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till 
the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be 
turned into marble with them ; how I never ct)uld be tircil g5 
with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty 



84 lamb's essays. 

rooms, witli their ■worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, an 
carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out— 
sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which 

iO had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary 
gardening man would cross me — and how the nectarines an 
poaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering t 
pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless no\\ 
and then, — and because I had more pleasure in strolling 

/T) about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or tli( 
firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, whicli 
were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying about 
upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around 
me — or basking in the orangery, till 1 could almost fancyl 

SO myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in 
that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace that darted 
to and fro in the fish-pond, at tlie liottom of the garden,j 
with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway 
down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their! 

85 impertinent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy-, 
idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, 
nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of children. 
Here John slyly deposited back ui)()n the plate a bunch of 
grapes, whicli, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated 

90 dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish 
them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewliat a 
more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grand- 
mother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial 
manner she might be said to love tlieir uncle, John L , 

95 because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a 
king to the rest of us ; and, instead of mojnng about in 
solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most 
mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger 
than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county 
100 in a morning, and join the hunters wdien there were any out 
— and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but 
had too much spirit to be always pent up within their 
boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as 
brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, 



j DREAM-CHILDREN. 85 

jbnt of their great-grandmother Field most especially ; and 105 
'low he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame- 
footed boy — for he was a good bit older than me — many a 
mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in after 
life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) 
make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, 110 
and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate lie 
had been to me when I was lame-footed ; and how when he 
died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if 
he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is 
'i betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I 115 
{thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and 
haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as 
' some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, 
; yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how 
1 much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed 120 
his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be 
! quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather 
tlian not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as 
he their poor uncle must have ])oen when the doctor took o(f 
his limb. — Hero the children fell a crying, and asked if their ]25 
little mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, 
' and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their 
\nicle, ])ut to tell them some stories about their pretty dead 
mother. Then I told how for seven long yeai's, in hope 
sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, 1 130 

courted the fair Alice W n ; and, as much as children 

could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly, 
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her 
eyes with such a reality of rc-presentment, that I became in 135 
doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that 
bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children 
gradually grew fainter o my view, receding, and still re- 
ceding, till nothing at L st but two mournful features were 
seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, 140 
strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech : *' We 
are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we childreu at all. 



86 lamb's essays. 

The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; 
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might 

145 have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe 

millions of ages before we have existence, and a name " 

and immediately awaking, I fonnd myself quietly seated in 
ray bachelor arm-cliair, where I had fallen asleep, with the 
faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. (or 

ir>0 James Elia) was gone for ever. 



I A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 

BY A FRIEND. 

rlTIS gentleman, who for some months past had been in 
a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to 
Mature. He just lived long enough (it was what he wished) 
D see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of the 
jondon Maijazine will henceforth know him no more. f) 

Exactly at twelve, last night, his queer spirit departed ; 
nd the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the ohl 
I ear. The mournful vibrations were caught in the dining- 
oom of his friends T. and H. ; and the company, asseml:)led 
here to Avelcome in another 1st of January, checked their 10 
arousals in mid-earth, and were silent. Janus wept. The 

■entle P r, in a whisper, signified his intention of 

levoting an elegy ; and Allan C, noljly forgetful of his 
lountrymen's wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes, full 
md friendly, as a Tale of LydiJalcross. 15 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of 
;he thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well 
exhausted ; and a two years and a half's existence has been 
I tolerable duration for a phantom. 

I am noAV at liberty to confess, that much which I have 20 
aeard objected to my late friend's writings was well founded. 
Crude they are, I grant you,— a sort of unlicked, incondite 
things, — villanously pranked in an affected array of anticpie 
modes and phrases. They had not been his if they hud 
been other than such ; and better it is that a writer should 25 
be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a 
aaturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. 



88 lamb's essays. 

Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did not 
know that what he tells us as of himself was often tru( 

30 only (historically) of another ; as in his Third Essay, (tc 
save many instances,) where, under the first person, (hit 
favourite figure,) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of v 
country boy placed at a London school, far from his friendf- 
and connections, — in direct opposition to his o vn earl} 

Sf) liistory. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own 
identity the griefs and atfections of another, — making him| 
self many, or reducing many unto himself, — then is thc| 
skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or heroine,j 
s[)eaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all ; who yeti 

•10 has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And 
liow shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who! 
doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, often-j 
times gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and 
expresses his own story modestly ? 

45 My late friend was in many respects a singular character. 
Tliose wlio did not like him liated him ; and some, Avho once 
liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth 
is, he gave himself too little concern about what he uttered, 
and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, 

50 and would ever out with what came uppermost. Witli the 
severe religionist he would pass for a free-tliinker ; while the 
otlier faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded them- 
selves that he belied his sentiments. Few understood him ; 
and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood 

55 himself. Tie too much aflfected that dangerous figure, — irony. 
He sowed doubtful si)eeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal 
hatred. He Avould interrupt the gravest discussion with 
some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in 
ears that could understand it. Your long and much talkers 

CO hated liim. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an 
inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an 
orator ; and he seemed determined that no one else should 
play that part when he was present. He was petit and 
ordinary in liis person and af»pearance. I have seen him 

65 sometimes in what is called good company, but, where he 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 89 

|(jhas been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd 
fellow, till (some unlucky occasion provoking it) lie would 
stutter out some senseless pun, (not altogether senseless 
iperhaps, if rightly taken,) which has stamped his character 
for the evening. It was hit or miss with him ; but, nine 70 
ii times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away 
a whole company his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier 
than his utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the 
ij appearance of effort. Ho has been accused of trying to be 
i! witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor 75 
thoughts articulation. He chose his companions for some 
; individuality of character which they manifested. Hence 
not many persons of science, and few professed literati, were 
lof his councils. They were, for the most part, persons of 
an uncertain fortune ; and as to such people, commonly, SO 
nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled 
(though moderate) income, he passed with most of them for 
;a great miser. To my knowledge, this was a mistake. His 
intimados, to confess a truth, were, in the world's eye, a 
I ragged regiment. He found them floating on the surface of 85 
I society ; and the colour, or something else, in the weed, 
pleased him. The burs stuck to him ; but they were good 
and loving burs for all that. He never greatly cared for the 
society of what are called good people. If any of these 
were scandalised, (and offences were sure to arise,) he could 90 
not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not 
making more concessions to the feelings of good people, he 
would retort by asking. What one point did these good 
people ever concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals 
and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of 95 
abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he 
might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would 
say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the friendly vapour 
ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it ! 
the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and 100 
the stammerer proceeded a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan oc rejoice that 
my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow 



90 lamb's essays. 

obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt th 

105 approaches of age ; and, while he pretended to cling to lif« 
you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Di. 
coursing with him latterly on this subject, he expresse 
himself with a pettishness which I thought unworthy ( 
him. In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he calle 

110 it) at Sliacklewell, some children belonging to a School ( 
Industry met us, and bowed and courtesied, as he thought 
in an especial manner to liim. " They take me for a visitirit 
governor," he nuittered earnestly. He had a horror, Avhicl 
he carried to a foible, of looking like any thing importaii 

115 and parochiak He thought that he ai)proached nearer t 
that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from bein;.' 
treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept s^ 
wary eye upon the advauces of age that should so entitle him. 
He lierded always, while it was possible, with people 

120 younger tlian himself. He did not conform to the marcli 
of time, but was dragged along in the procession. Hisj 
manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of thei 
boy-man. The toga virills never sat gracefully on hm 
shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt intaj 

V2:> liim, and he resented the impertinence of manhood. These 
were weaknesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to 
explicate some of his writings. 

He left little property l)chind him. Of course, the little 
that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin 

130 Ijridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his 
escritoire, which have been handed over to the editor of this 
magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will sliortly 
ajipear, retaining his accustomed signature. 

He has himself not obscurely hinted that his emjjloy- 

135 ment lay in a public office. Tlie gentlemen in the export 
department of the East-India House will forgive me if I 
acknowledge the readiness with which they assisted me in 
the retrieval of his few manuscripts. They pointed out in a 
most obliging manner the desk at which he had been planted 

110 for forty years ; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, 
in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly 



A CUARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 91 

:j than his few printed tracts, might be called his "Works." 
jl They seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally 
,' commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he 
was the inventor of some ledger which should combine the 145 
precision and certainty of the Italian double entry (I think 
they called it) with tlie brevity and facility of some newer 
I German system ; but I am not able to appreciate the worth 
. of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm 
j regard for his associates in office, and how fortunate he 150 
1 considered himself in having his lot thrown in amongst 
them. There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewdness, 
j and even talent, among tliese clerks, (he M^ould say,) than 
in twice the number of authors by profession that I have 
conversed with. He would brighten np sometimes upon 155 
, the "old days of the India House," when he consorted 
with Woodroffe and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant 
j and worthy representative, bating the point of sanctity, of 
old facetious Bishop Corbet) ; and Hoole, who translated 
I Tasso ; and Bartlemy Brown, whose fathor (God assoil him 160 
j tlierefore !) modernized Walton ; and sly, Avarm-hearted old 
I Jack Cole, (King Cole they called him in those days,) and 
j Campe and Fumljelle, and a world of choice spirits, more 
tlian I can rememljcr to name, who associated in those days 
, with Jack Burrell (the bon vivant of the South-Sea House) ; 165 
and little Eyton, (said to be a facsimile of Pope, — he was 
a miniature of a gentleman,) that was cashier under him ; 
and Dan Voight of the Custom House, that left the famous 
library. 

Well, Elia is gone, — for aught I know, to be reunited 170 
with them, — and these poor traces of his pen are all we 
have to show for it. How little survives of the wordiest 
authors ! Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few 
glittering words only ! His Essays found some favourers, 
as they appeared separately. They shuffled their way in 175 
the crowd singly : how they will read, now they are brought 
together, is a question for the publishers, who have thus 
ventured to draw out into one piece his " weaved-up follies." 

PmL-EuA. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 



I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiseth 
with all things ; I have no antipatliy, or rather idiosyncrasy in any 
thing. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I heliold 
with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Beligio 
Medici. 

THAT the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon 
the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional 
and conjectural essences ; in whose categories of Being the 
possible took tlie upper hand of the actual ; should have 
F overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor con- 
cretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is ratlier 
to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he should 
have condescended to distinguish that species at all. For 
myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my 
jQ activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt ahove the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national 
or individual, to an unliealthy excess. I can look with no 
indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to 

in ine a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes 
indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer 
words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and dis- 
likings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. 
In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am 

20 a lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I 
cannot feel towards all equally. The more purely-English 
word that expresses sympathy, wiU better explain my mean- 
ing. I can be a friend to a worthy man, who upon another 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 93 

ccount caiinot be my mate or fellow. I cannot KJfe all 
eople alike.* 25 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am 
bliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They 
annot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of tliat 
ation who attempted to do it. There is something more 
lain and ingenuous in tlieir mode of proceeding. We know 30 
ne another at first siglit. There is an order of imperfect 
itellects (under which mine must be content to rank) which 
1 its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners 
f the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather 
jggestive than compreliensive. Tliey have no pretences to 35 
mch clearness or precision in tlieir ideas, or in their manner 
i expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess 
urly) has few whole ])ieces in it. They are content with 
'agnients and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no 
dl front to them — a feature or side-face at the most. Hints 40 
ad glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is tin- 
tmost they })retend to. Tlicy beat up a little game peradvcn- 

* I would be understood as confining myself to the sulyect of 
nper/ect syinpathies. To nations or classes of Tnen there can be no direct 
Jtipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite 
) another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them, 
have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two 
jrsons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and 
istantly fighting. 

We by proof find there should be 

'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 

That though he can show no just reason why 

For any former wrong or injury. 

Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 

Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 

Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 

^'et notwithstanding, hates him as a devil. 

he lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels," and he 
ibjoins a cuiious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted 
) assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack, 
.uld give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antijiathy 
hich he had taken to the first sight of the King. 

The cause which to that act compell'd hira 

Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



94 lamb's essays. 

ture — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutionf 
to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady an 

45 polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, and again wanin^i 
Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw out 
random word in or out of season, and be content to let i 
pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as 
they were upon their oath — but must be understood, speakin 

50 or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait t 
mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the gree 
ear. They deliglit to impart their defective discoveries v 
they arise, without waiting for their full developmen 
They are no systematizers, and would Ijut err more b 

55 attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggesti\- 
merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mij 
taken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. H 
Minerva is born in panoply. You are never admitted to s( 
his ideas in their growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are n( 

60 rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You nev* 
catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggest 
anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect ordi 
and completeness. He brings his total wealth into compani 
and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always aljout hiii 

65 He never stoops to catch a glittering sometliing in yoi 
presence to share it with you, before he quite knows whethi 
it be true touch or not. You cannot cry hnloes to anythiii{ 
that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You nevd 
Avitness his first apprehension of a thing. His understanc 

70 ing is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawi 
the early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicioi 
Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-conscious 
nespesj partial illuminations,diin instincts, embryo conceptioni 
have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight 

75 dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has n 
doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Between tit 
affirnuitive and the negative there is no border-land wit, 
him. You cannot liover with liim upon the confines of trutl! 
or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He alwajj 

SO keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him-| 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 95 

for he sets you riylit. His taste never fluctuates. His 
morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or under- 
stand middle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. 
His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the 
fianctity of an oath. You must speak upon tlie square with 85 
him. He stops a metaphor hke a suspected person in an 
enemy's country. " A healtliy book ! " said one of his country- 
men to me, wlio had ventured to give tliat appellation to 
John Bunclc, — " did I catch rightly what you said ? I have 
heanl of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but 90 
I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a 
ibook." Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions 
before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, 
if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it. Remember 
you are upon your oatli. I have a print of a graceful female 95 

after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. . 

After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him 
ihow he lik(;d my beauty (a foolish name it goes by among 
my friends) — wlien he very gravely assured me, that "he 
had consideial)le respect for my character and talents" (so 100 
he was ])leased to say), "but had not given himself much 
thought about tlie degree of my personal pretensions." The 
misconception staggered me, but did not seem much to dis- 
•concert him. Persons of this nation are particularly fond of 
affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They do not so 105 
properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed appear to 
have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable 
for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether 
the proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or 
such as is impossible to become a subject of disputation. I 110 
was present, not long since, at a party of North Britons, 
where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop 
a silly expression (in my South Bjjitish way), that I wished it 
were the father instead of the son — when four of them started 
up at once to inform me that "that was impossible, because 115 
he was dead." An impracticable wish, it seems, was more 
than they coiild conceive. Swift has hit otf this p^art of 
their character, namely their love of truth, in his biting way, 



96 lamb's essays. 

but with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage 

120 to the margin.* The tediousness of these people is certainly 
provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another^ — In my 
early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns 
I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself with 
his countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found 

125 that a true Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, 
even more than he would your contempt of him. The latter 
he imputes to your " imperfect acquaintance with many of 
the words which he uses"; and the same objection makes it 
a presumption in you to suppose tliat you can admire him. — 

130 Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have 
neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his delineation of Bury 
and his companion, upon their first introduction to our 
metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they 
will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his 

135 Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued 
Humphrey Clinker 1 

I have, in the absti ict, no disrespect for Jews. They 
are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which 
Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- 

140 mids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar 
intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have 
not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices 
cling about me. I cannot sliake off the story of Hugh of 
Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the 

145 one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on 
the other, between our and their fathers, must and ought, to 
affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can 
run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, such 

* There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
selves, and entertain their company, with relatinn; facts of no conse- 
quence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen 
every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots 
than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest 
circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not 
a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent 
and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable.— 
EirUa towards an Essay on Conversation. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 97 

as candour, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can 
close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion, A Hebrew is M>0 
nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change 
— for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are 
beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish 
the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become 
so fashionable. The recipi'ocal endearments have, to me, 15.^) 
something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like 
to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in 
awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are 
converted, why do they not come over to us altogether? 
Why keep up a form of separation, M'hen the life of it is 160 
fled 1 n they can sit with us at table, why do they keck at 
our cookery ? I do not understand these half-convertites. 
Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I 
Hke fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding 
piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the 165 

synagogue is essentially separative. B would have been 

more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his fore- 
fathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature 

meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong 

in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the 170 
Shil)boleth. How it breaks out when he sings, "The 
Children of Israel passed through the Eed Sea!" The 
auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and 
he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking 

him. B has a strong expression of sense in his counte- 17.5 

nance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of 
his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with understanding, 
as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Command- 
ments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. 
His nation, in general, have not over-sensible coimtenances. 180 
How should they? — but you seldom see a silly expression 
among them. Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a 
man's visage. I never heard of an idiot being born among 
them. — Some admire the Jewish female-physiognomy. I 
admire it— but with trembling. Jael had those full dark 185 
inscrutable eyes. 

a 



98 lamb's essays. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong 
traits of l)enignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness 
towards some of these faces — or rather masks — that have 

190 looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets 
and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these 
" images of God cut in eb(jny." But I should not like to 
associate with them, to share my meals and my good nights 
with them — because they are black. 

1 i'-^ I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the 
Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day 
wh(m I meet any of their people in my path. When I am 
ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet 
voice of a Quaker, acts u})on me as a ventilator, lightening 

200 the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot 
like the Quakers (as Uesdemona would say) "to live with 
them." I am all over sophisticated — with humours, fancies, 
craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, 
theatres, chit-chat, scanchxl, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand 

205 whimwhams, which their simpler taste can do without. I 
should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites are 
too high for the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve 
dressed for the angel ; my gusto too excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

210 The indirect answers wliich Quakers are often found to 
return to a question put to tliem may be explained, I think, | 
without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to 
evasion and equivocating than other people. They naturally 
look to their words more carefully, and are more cautious of 

215 committing themselves. They have a peculiar character to 
keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon their 
veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an i 
oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme cases, 
sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be 

220 confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion 
of two kinds of truth — the one a|3plicable to the solemn 
affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings 
of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by 






IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 99 

m oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of 
a'he shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and 225 
E!onced('d, upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. 
r5omething less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear 
a person say, "You do not expect me to speak as if I were 

ipon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and 
(Inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary con- 2;J0 
/rersation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, 
^vhere clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the circum- 
'(itances, is not required. A Quaker ]s;nows none of this 
jlistinction. His simple affirmation being received, upon 
I he most sacred (jccasions, without any further test, stamps 235 
H value upon the words which he is to use ui)on the most 
indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with 
snore severity. You can have of him no more than his word. 
i!:Ie knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, he 
I'orfeits, for himself at least, his clainr to the invidious 240 
i5xemi)tion. He knows that his syllables are weighed — and 
low far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, 
ixerted against a person, has a tendency to produce inilirect 
mswers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, 
alight be illustrated, and the practice justified, by a nu)re 245 
sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this 
'Dccasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is notorious 
in Quakers ujion all contingencies, might be traced to this 
im|)i).sed self- watchfulness — if it did not seem rather an 
hiuml)le and secular scion of that old stock of religious 250 
ionstaucy, which never bent or faltered, in tins Primitive 
Friends, or gave way to tlie winds of persecution, to the 
violence of judge or accuser, luider trials and racking . 
examinations. " You will never l)e the wiser, if I sit here 
answering your questions till midnight," said one of those 255 
upriglit Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases 
with a puzzling subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers may 
be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this 
people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. 
— I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, 260 
buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. 



100 lamb's essays. 

We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly ter 
apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My fiiend 
coufined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way tools 

265 supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest 
of my companions discovered that ^he had charged for both 
meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorou.- 
and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part 
of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady 

270 seemed by n.) means a fit recipient. The guard came in with 
liis usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their 
money and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, m\ 
humble imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which I 
had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they] 

275 all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and' 
marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first,; 
with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do 
better than follow the example of such grave and warrantalile 
personages. We got in. The steps went up. Tlie coach 

280 drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly 
or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudiljle 
— and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had 
for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I 
waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered 

285 by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their 
conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped 
on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At 
length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his 
next neighbour, " Hast thee heard how indigos go at the 

290 India House?" and the question operated as a soporific oa 
my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 



NOTES 



Note. — The Letters are quoted by the numbering in Ainger's 
' edition, 2 vols. 1888. 

r 

[CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 

I Lamb's "Works" were published in two small volumes, 1818. 
"You will smile," he says to Coleridge in the Dedication, "to see the 
t .lender labors of your friend designated by the title of Works." The 
volumes contain Poems, a Tragedy, the tale of Rosamund Gray, and 
! various Essays, besides the Recollections of Christ's Hospital. The 
present Essay, written under the assumed name of " Elia," pretends to 
be a criticism by another hand of the former work. 

In another later paper, called "A Character of the late Elia by a 
Friend," Lamb tells us how the author in this essay " Under \\\& first 
iiTSOii (his favourite figure) shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country 
boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections — 
in direct opposition to his own early history." (See p. 88.) In fact he 
twines his own story with that of his friend S. T. Coleridge, and yet at 
the end of the essay speaks of the real Coleridge as another person. 
Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, but lived for a 
while at "Sweet Calne in Wiltshire." The names indicated by initials 
are known from a key written by Lamb himself, but are only interesting 
in connexion with Lamb's biography. 

19 'piggin,' a small wooden vessel. 

25 'banyan-days.' 'S^moW&'iX''!, Rodenck Rafidom, xxv. : "I expressed 
a curiosity to know the meaning of banyan-day. They told me that 
on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays the ship's company had no 
allowance of meat, and that these meagre days were called banyan- 
days, the reason of which they did not know; but I have since learned 
they take their denomination from a set of devotees in some parts of 
the East-Indies, who never taste flesh." Banian is an old name for a 
Hindoo. 

96 'L.'s governor,' The allusion is to Samuel Salt, with whom 
Lamb's (ather lived as clerk. See the Essay on The Old Benchers of 
the Inner Temple. 

130 ' Caligula's minion.' The emperor Caligula made his horse a 
consul. 

155 'to feed,' &c, Virgil, ^neid, i. 464, " animum pictura pascit 
inani." 



102 lamb's essays. 

163 ' 'T is said he ate,' &c. Half quoted from Antony and 
Cleopatra, i. 4. 

242 'watchet' is pale blue. Milton, Hist, of Muscovia: "The 
mariners all appeared in watchet, or sky-coloured cloth." So 
" watchet eyes." \ 

268 ' San Benito,' a short linen dress, with demons painted on it, 
worn by persons condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. 

293 ' like a drucer.' Shakespeare, Antony a>id Cleopatra, iii. II, 37. 

304 ' Insolent Greece.' Quoted from Ben Jonson's lines on Shakespeare. 

314 'Rousseau' and 'John Locke,' though with very different aims, 
both taught that education should follow the natural disposition of a 
child. 

337 'the Samite,' Pythagoras. 

353 ' Ululantes,' 'Tartarus.' The allusion appears to be to Virgil, 
Aen. vi. 548 foil. 

356 'scrannel pipes.' Milton, Lycidas, I, 124. 

358 ' Flaccus,' quibble about Rex, etc. See Hor. Sat. i, 7, 35 ; 
Terence, And. 5, 2, 16, Adelp. 3, 3, 74. 

364 'caxon,' a wig. 

378 'piecing out,' &c. "Piece out our imperfections with your 
thoughts." Shakespeare, Henry V. pro). 23. 

434 ' Regni novitas,' Virg. Aen, i. 563. 

445 " Finding some of Stuart's race 

Unhappy, pass their Annals by." 

M. Prior, Carmen Seculare for 1700. 

453 'Mirandola,' Pico della Mirandola, Italian philosopher and poet 
(1463-1494), an ardent student of Plato. ' Jamblichus' and ' Plotinus,' 
Ale-xandrian philosophers of the 3rd and 4th century after Christ, called 
Neo-Platonists. 

458 ' Grey Friars.' Christ's Hospital stands upon the site of a 
convent of the Grey Friars. The site was given by Henry VIII., and 
the school founded by Edward VI. 

459 ' wit-combats,' the original is from Fuller's Worthies, where Ben 
Jonson is the Spanish galleon, Shakespeare the English man-of-war. 

485 'sizars.' See Oxford in the Vacation, I. 80. 

MY RELATIONS. 

In this Essay Lamb draws portraits of his aunt, and his brother, 
John Lamb. He touches upon their foibles, and even upon graver 
faults of character, with the tender irony that veils affection. 

4 'Browne.' Sir Thomas Browne, author of AW/^/(7iI/£^/«, was one 
of Lamb's favourite authors. He boasts, in the T'wo Races of Men, that 
he was the first of moderns to discover the beauties of the Urn Burial, 



NOTES. 103 

29 ' chapel in Essex Street,' a Unitarian chapel. Essex Street runs 
out of the Strand. 

48 Charles Lamb had a brother and a sister, John and Mary. These 
he here calls his 'cousins' James and Bridget. He also had a sister 
Elizabeth, who died in infancy. 

60 'grand climacteric,' every 7th, or 9th, or the 63rd year of a man's 
life was supposed to be 'climacterical,' or specially dangerous, but the 
last most. 

64 ' pen of Yorick.' One of the characters in Sterne's Tristram 
Shandy is the parson Yorick, who is also the supposed traveller in the 
Sent! menial Journey. Sterne took the name from the clown-scene in 
Hamlet. 

71 * phlegm,' indifference. 

72 ' temperament,' natural disposition, 

90 ' Domenichino.' Domenico Zampieri, a Bolognese painter 
(1581-1641). 

96 'Charles of Sweden,' known as Charles the Twelfth. 

97 ' upon instinct.' See Shakespeare, I Henry IV. ii. 4, 300. 
118 'thus sitting.' Par. Lost, ii. 164. 

138 'lungs shall crow.' Shakespeare, As You Like It, ii. 7, 30, 

153 * Claude ' Lorraine was a French, ' Hobbima' a Dutch, landscape 
painter. ' Christie's and Phillips's,' art auction-rooms. 

174 'his Cynthia of the minute.' Pope, Moral Essays, ep. ii. 19: 
he " choose a firm cloud, before it fall, and in it catch, ere she change, 
the Cynthia of this minute." 

179 'Carracci.' There were three painters of this name. The 
meaning is that as James Elia grew less enchanted with his picture, he 
assigned it to less and less noted artists, 

214 'all for pity he could die.' Compare Shakespeare, Lear, iv. 7, 

216 'Thomas Clarkson,' associated with William Wilberforce in the 
abolition of the slave trade. The phrase, "True yoke-fellow with 
Time," is from Wordsworth's sonnet to Clarkson, written 1S07. 

226 'he thinks of relieving.' An echo from Goldsmith's sketch of 
Burke in the Kelaliation: "And thought of convincing while they 
thought of dining." So in the next sentence there is perhaps an eclio 
from Johnson's line about Shakespeare : " And panting Time toiled 
after him in vain." Elia is full of such, 

MACKERY END IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 

I 'Bridget Elia' is Charles Lamb's sister Mary. 
7 ' the rash King,' jephthah. 

9 ' with a difference.' Ophelia in Hamlet^ iv. 5, 182 : " O you 
must wear your rue with a difference." 



104 lamb's essays. 

l6 ' Burton,' author of the Anatomy of Melatuholy. The Religio 
Medici is the work of Sir Thomas Browne. ' Margaret Duchess of 
Newcastle' lived in the time of the Commonwealth, and wrote, besides 
poems, a life of her husband — "a jewel," so Lamb held, "for which 
no casket was rich enough.'" 

64 'stuflf o' the conscience.' Othello^ i. 2. 

123 'but thou.' Wordsworth, Yarrozv Visited, st. 6. 

161 'scriptural cousins.' St. Lvke\. 40. 

166 B.F.= Barron Field, a barrister, who after this incident went to 
Australia as a judge. The Essay, Distant Correspondents, is cast 
in the form of a letter to him. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 

In illustration of this visit to Blakesware (the real Blahsmoor) see 
Letter ccxviii. : " You have well described your old-fashioned grand 
paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are 
of some such place? I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the 
London). Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old mansion." And 
Letter xlv. (to Southey): " I have but just got your letter, being returned 
from Herts, where I have passed a few red-letter days with much 
pleasure. I would describe the county to you, as you have done by 
Devonshire ; but, alas ! I am a poor pen at that same. I could tell you 
of an old house with a tapestry bedroom, the ' Judgment of Solomon ' 
composing one panel, and ' Actseon spying Diana naked ' the other, 
I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints, and the 
Roman Ctesars in marble hung round. I could tell of a wilderness, 
and of a village church, and where the bones of my honoured grandam 
lie ; but there are feelings which refuse to be translated, sulky 
aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another soil. Of this 
nature are old family faces and scenes of infancy." 

46 ' Cowley ' himself in the Essay Myself describes how as a child 
he sat in his mother's parlour and read Spenser. 

58 ' Actseon ' beheld Diana bathing. He was changed to a stag and 
torn in pieces by his dogs. In art he is represented with sprouting horns. 

61 ' Marsyas ' — so ran the old horrible legend — was skinned alive by 
Phoebus for venturing to rival him in music. 

92 'garden-loving poet,' Andrew Marvell. The lines occur in .(4///^/tf» 
House, a description of the seat of the Lord Fairfax, in Yorkshire. 
114 'coatless,' without a coat of arms. 

124 'capitulatory,' that sum up or recapitulate their achievements. 
143 'Damoetas,' 'iEgon.' See Virg. Eel. ii. i. 

167 ' Alice,' alluded to also in the Essay Dream Children, Lamb's 
early love ; a personality, like Wordsworth's Lucy, living for us only 
in the shadowy recollections of the author. 



NOTES. 105 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

A good deal of this essay is true to fact. Lamb's father, here 
figured under the name of Lovel, was actually clerk to Samuel Salt, a 
Bencher of the Temple. 

7 ' Spenser,' the lines are from the Prothalatttium, st. 8. 

20 'goodly pile,' called ' Paper Buildings.' 

27 'Twickenham,' higher up the river, above the dirtier waters of 
the town, where river-nymphs might be imagined dwelling. 

43 'Ah! yet doth beauty.' Shakespeare, Sonnets, 104. 

59 'carved it out quaintly.' In 3 Henry VL, ii. 5, 24, the King 
longs to be a homely swain and "carve out dials quaintly, point by 
point." 

62 'Marvell.' The whole poem will be found in the Golden 
Treasury of English Lyrics, No. cxi. 

76 ' meanwhile the mind,' &c. The sense is : From the lesser 
pleasures of the outward eye the mind retires into the higher pleasures 
of inward contemplation, imagining more perfect visions than those the 
eye sees ; counting all the visible world as nothing beside the freshness 
of original thought. 

196 ' Miss Blandy ' was a lady who was hanged in 1752 for poisoning 
her father at the instigation of her lover. 

256 'his flapper.' Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Voyage to Laputa, ii. : 
" The minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations 
that they can neither speak nor attend to the discourses of others 
without being roused, for which reason those persons who are able to 
afford it always keep a flapper in their family ; and the business of 
this officer is gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who 
is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker 
addresseth himself." 

289 'a remnant most forlorn.' From one of Lamb's own poems on 
his aunt's funeral. 

" One parent yet is left — a wretched thing, 
A sad survivor of his buried wife, 
A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, 
A semblance most forlorn of what he was." 

292 'Bayes,' the leading character in Buckingham's Rehearsal, a 
satire on the tragedies of Dryden and his contemporaries, which has 
not yet lost its charm. The character of Bayes was meant mainly for 
a caricature of Dryden himself : Dryden took his revenge in the famous 
lines on Zimri. 



106 lamb's essays. 

381 'old men covered.' See the Essay on Witches : "The picture of 
the Witch raising up Samuel — O ! that old man covered vk-ith a mantle !" 

391 'reducing,' in the unusual sense of 'bringing hack'; so 're- 
ductive,' I, 431. 

410 'sub-treasurer.' Randal Norris was sub-treasurer of the Inner 
Temple. 

422 'green and vigorous senility.' " Cruda deo viridisque senectus." 
Virg. Aen. vi. 304. 

423 'Ye yourselves are old.' See Lear's appeal to the heavens 
against his daughters, ii. 7, 194. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

This Essay was the second written for the London Magazine over the 
signature "Elia"; the first describes the clerks of the old South Sea 
House. 

5 'Vivares,' 'Woollet,' engravers of the i8th century. 

II 'notched and crept scrivener.' A 'cropt scrivener' (attorney or 
money-lender) is a phrase of Ben Jonson, alluding to the clo.;e-cut 
hair of the professional man. Lamb's added epithet 'notched' seems 
borrowed from his quill or his desk, unless it refers to the 'notches' 
or tallies by which the old scrivener kept his accounts. 

14 ' agnize,' acknowledge. Shakespeare, Othello, i. 3,232. 

43 'Andrew.' The original line is "Andrew and Simon, famous 
after known." Paradise Regained, ii. "j. 

46 'Baskett,' king's printer, possessing patent for printing Bibles, 
issued editions with prints from 1 7 12 onwards. 

48 ' Spagnoletti.' Ribera lo Spagnoletto (1588-1656) painted a 
"Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew," now in Madrid. 

56 'far off their coming shone.' Adapted from Paradise Lost, vi. 
768. 

70 'Bodley.' Sir Thomas Bodley founded the great library known 
by his name at Oxford. 

78 'admitted ad eundem,' that is, a degree occasionally granted 
without residence. 

80 'sizar,' 'servitor,' 'gentleman commoner.' The first two were 
originally paid scholars who had certain menial duties to perform ; the 
names still remain, though the duties are abolished. A gentleman 
commoner was one who paid higher fees and had special privileges, 

116 'palpable obscure.' Paradise Lost, ii. 406. 



j NOTES. 107 

' 125 'dormitory,' resting-place, a middle-state between this life and the 
next. 

134 * Herculanean raker.' A number of charred papyrus rolls were 
I discovered in a library at Herculaneum. So Wordsworth : 

" O ye who patiently explore 
I The wreck of Herculanean lore, 

What rapture could ye seize 
Some Theban fragment, or unroll 
I One precious, tender hearted scroll 

Of pure Simonides!" 

'credit of the three witnesses.' Alluding to the disputed verse, 
[ I Joint V. 7 : "There are three that bear record in heaven," &c. 

136 ' Porson,' the famous Greek scholar and classical editor 
(1759-1S08). 

' G. D.' From Lamb's letters we get many amusing pictures of 
his good-natured, short-sighted, pedantic friend George Dyer: "God 
never put a kinder heart into flesh of man than George Dyer's!" 
"O George! George! with a head uniformly wrong and a heart 
uniformly right !" " George Dyer is the only literary character I am 
happily acquainted with. The oftener I see him, the more deeply 
I admire him. He is goodness itself. If I could but calculate 
the precise date of his death, I would write a novel on purpose to 
make George the hero. I could hit him off to a hair." Lamb did 
make him the hero of an essay, the Amicus Rcdivivus of the last 
essays. 

141 'tall Scapula.' A tall copy is one not cut down in the binding. 
Scapula pirated Stephen's Thesaums Lingua Graecce in 1530. 

149 'a calm and sinless life,' occurs in the Dedication to Wordsworth's 
White Doe. Lamb's phrase may be an adaptation of this. 

188 ' Queen Lar,' a domestic goddess. 

196 ' .Sosia,' a slave in Plautus' Amphitryon, is confounded by his own 
" double," the god Mercury in disguise, 

205 'co-sphered with Plato.' Milton, II Penseroso: 

" Where oft I may outwatch the Bear 
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
The spirit of Plato." 

206 ' Harrington,' author of Ocraiia. 
226 ' Agur's wish.' Proverbs xxx. lo. 

257 ' Delectable Mountains. ' In ^Muysxi 5 Pilgrint's Progress, 



108 lamb's essays. 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

A hoy is a one-decked, one-masted, cutter-rigged vessel. 
26 'chimera,' put for any fire-breathing monster. The "fire-god 
parching up Scamander " was Hephaestus. Iliad, xxi. 342, foil. 

43 ' Ariel.' " Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flamed 
amazement." Shakespeare, Tempest, i. 2. 198. 

107 ' ignorant present. ' Macbeth, i. 5, 58. 

no 'the Colossus at Rhodes' was a gigantic statue of the Sun-God 
near the mouth of the harbour. That it straddled across the harbour 
was a pure legend. It was destroyed soon after its erection by an 
earthquake. 

125 'the Reculvers,' twin towers belonging to an old monastic 
church, now ruined, on the north coast of Kent, near Heme Bay, 
subsequently used as beacon-towers. 

190 'for many a day.' Thomson's Seasons, " Summer," 1. 1002. 

192 'still-vexed Bermoothes.' Shakespeare, Tempest, i. 2, 229. 

196 ' be but as buggs.' Spenser, Faerie Queen, ii. 12, 25. Tlie original 
has ' fearen ' for 'frighten'; ' buggs '= bugbears, terrors; 'entrair = 
depths, bowels. The whole passage in Spenser is a collection of 
quaint sea-monsters. 'Juan Fernandez' is the isl.ind on which lived 
Alexander Selkirk, the original of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 

214 'poem of Gebir,' by Lamb's contemporary, W. S. Landor (fifth 
book). In his letters (No. xlv.) Lamb expresses himself somewhat 
contemptuously: "I have seen ' Gebor ! ' 'Gebor' aptly so de- 
nominated from geborish, quasi gibberisli. But ' Gebor ' hath some 
lucid intervals." 

222 'inland murmurs.' An echo from Wordsworth, Lines Written 
above Tintern Abbey, 1. 4. 

237 'Meshech.' Psalm qxy.. 5. 

251 'run,' cant term for contraband. 

262 'a book to read strange matters,' quoted from Macbeth, \. v. 

291 'The daughters of Cheapside,' in the original "the beauties of 
the Cheap." The author is one of Lamb's loved Elizabethans, Thomas 
Randolph, one of the "tribe of Ben" or "sons " of Ben Jonson. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

This Essay appeared in the London Magazine for May, 1825, and 
Lamb had actually received a pension from the directors of the India 
House in the preceding March. For the directors he substitutes an 
imaginary firm of merchants. 



NOTES. 109 

143 'that's born.* From Thomas Middleton, an Elizabethan 
dramatist (d. 1627). Some of his plays have been published in the 
"Mermaid Series." See also Lamb's Specimens. 

167 'Sir Robert Howard* was Dryden's brother-in-law, and 
collaborated with him in the Indian Queen (1664). He is one of the 
imaginary speakers in Dryden's celebrated dialogue On Dramatic Poesy 
(1667). 

216 'Carthusian.' An order of monks originally emanating from the 
solitude of La Chartreuse. The name in England was corrrupted into 
Charterhouse. 

250 ' huge cantle,' a large slice or corner. See i Hinry IV., iii. i, 100. 

255 'Lucretian pleasure.' Alluding to the common quotation from 
Ltccretius, ii. I.: "Suave mari magno," &c. See Bacon, Essay i. , 
" On Truth," Adv. of Learning, i. 8, 5. 

266 'as low as to the fiends.' Hamlet, ii. 2, 519 (of Fortune's 
wheel) — " Bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven. 
As low as to the fiends." 

275 ' opera.' The pun (it may be explained for non-classical readers) 
lies in the second sense of opera, works, plural of opus, work. 

DREAM-CHILDREN : A REVERIE. 

This, the most touching of Lamb's personal utterances, was written 
a short while after the death of his brother, John Lamb, the 'James 
Elia ' of the Essays. Charles Lamb was then left alone with his 
sister Mary. His grandmother, Mary Field, had been housekeeper 
at Blakesware, the ' Blakesmoor ' of the Essay already given. 

Biographers have sought to identify 'the fair Alice W n,' but for 

us she is simply Lamb's dream-wife, as the second Alice is his dream- 
child. 

A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 

BY A FRIEND. 

This Essay appeared in the London Magazine (1823). Part of it was 
republished in 1833 as a Preface to the Last Essays of Elia. 

9 ' T. and H. ,' Taylor and Heney, publishers of the London Magazine. 

11 'Janus,' the signature of Wainwright, a contributor to the London 
Magazine. 

12 'P r,' Bryan Waller Procter, known as "Barry Cornwall,'* 

author of English Songs (1832), and a Memoir of Charles Lamd {1S66). 

13 'Allan C.,' Allan Cunningham, a Scotch writer, one of the con- 
tributors to the London Magazine. He was the author of Lives of 
British Painters, and a Life of Sir David Wilkie; among his songs the 
best known is that beginning " A wet sheet and a flowing sea." 



110 lamb's essays. 

13 'nobly forgetful' because Elia, in the Essay Imperfect Sym- 
pathies, declares, "I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, 
and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair." 

159 'facetious Bishop Corbet,' Richard Corbet (1582-1635), bishop 
of Oxford and Norwich, author of FaretveU to the Fairies and other 
light miscellany verse. See Chambers' Cyclopcedia of English Literature^ 
i. 238, for specimens. 

159 'Hoole.' In Letter xx. Lamb says, "Fairfax [the Elizabethan 
translator of Tasso] I have been in quest of a long time. Johnson, in 
his Life of Waller^ gives a most delicious specimen of him, and adds, 
in the true manner of that delicate critic, as well as amiable man, ' It 
may be presumed that this old version will not be much read after the 
elegant translation of my friend Mr. Hoole.' I endeavoured — I wished 
to gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, the great boast and 
ornament of the India House, but soon desisted. I found him more 
vapid than smallest small beer 'sun-vinegared.'" Later he writes, 
" By the way, I have hit upon Fairfax's Godfrey of Bullen for half-a« 
crown. Rejoice with me." (Letter xxv.) 

160 'assoil,' absolve. Lamb greatly admired Izaak Walton's 
Compleat Angler. " It would sweeten a man's temper at any time to 
read it." (Letter xii.) 

178 'weaved-up folHes.' "Must I ravel out my weaved-up folly?" 
Shakespeare, Richard II. iv. i, 228. 

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

I 'Author of the Religio Medici.'' Sir Thomas Browne (1605- 
1682) appealed to Lamb by the stateliness of his style, by his large 
toleration, his "general and indifferent temper," and by the quaint 
fancies, the " beautiful obliquities " of his brain. See Essay Mackery 
End, The quoted passage will be found in Religio Medici, part 2 
sec. i. Below (sec. iv.) Browne reproves another "offence unto 
charity," of branding whole nations by opprobrious epithets, when 
" by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow assassin the honour 
of a nation." 

3 'notional and conjectural essences.' For Browne's speculations 
about the world of spirits ("notional essences " = beings of fancy's 
creation) see in particular Religio Medici, part I sec. xxxiii. : "There- 
fore, for spirits, I am so far from denying their existence, that I could 
easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particular persons, 
have their tutelary and guardian angels." He discusses their probable 
natures, and confesses " there is not any creature that hath so near a 
glimpse of their nature as light in the sun and elements — we style it a 
Ijare accident, but where it subsists alone, 't is a spiritual substance, and 
may be an angel — in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit," 



NOTES. Ill 

"These spirits," he says, "are the magisterial and masterpiece of the 
Creator, the flower, or, as we may say, the best part of nothing ; 
actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability." These 
last words were doubtless in Lamb's thought when he said that in 
Browne's categories (classes) of being, " the possible took the upper 
hand of the actual." Browne's mysticism was the fruit of a love of 
paradox : "I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to 
an O altiludo." (Part i sec. ix.) See what he says on Dreams. (Part 2 
sec. xi.) Another Essay which Browne seemingly inspired by repulsion, 
is that on New Year's Eve. 

5 'concretions,' realities, as opposed to the notional essences. 
II 'standing on earth.' "Standing on earth, not rapt above the 
pole," a line from Milton's invocation of Urania {Paradise Lost, vii. 23) 
to "descend from Heaven" to sing the things of earth. 

' Heywood.' {Fooinote.) Thomas Hey wood, a prolific Elizabethan 
dramatist, described by Lamb (in the Specit/iens) as " a sort of prose 
Shakespeare," He also wrote various poems (as the one from which 
Lamb quotes) and songs, the best of which is " Pack, clouds, away, 
and welcome day." 

45 ' polar.' For illustration see Shakespeare, yulms Ceesar, iii. i : 
" But I am constant as the northern star, 
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament." 

58 'his Minerva.' Alluding to the well-known Greek legend of 
Pallas Athena springing fully armed from the head of Zeus. 

67 'true touch.' Touch is (i) a stone to try the quality of metals ; 
(2) the trial, as " Ten thousand men must bide the (ouch " (Shakespeare, 
Henry IV.) ; (3) the tried metal, proved quality, as here, and " My 
friends of noble touch." (Shakespeare, Coriolaniis, iv. I.) 

89 'John Buncle.' A fictitious autobiography written by Thomas 
Amory (1691-1788). This was one of the "oddities of authorship" 
that Lamb relished. In the Two Races of Men he tells how, "in 
yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower -volume, with eyes closed, 
mourns his I'avished mate " ; meaning that some borrower had carried 
off a volume. The actual John Buncle is made to marry seven wives 
one after another, but to hold it wrong to mourn overmuch for the dead, 

96 ' Leonardo da Vinci.' The print was from the Vierge aux 
Rochers, the "Virgin of the I^ocks " of Leonardo (1452-1519), of 
which there are two variations, one in tlie National Gallery of London, 
and one in the Louvre at Paris. Lamb has some lines upon the picture, 
remarkable as showing how the great Ude of Wordsworth was then 
ringing in his ears. 

130 'Thomson,' 'Smollett,' ' Hume.' James Thomson (1700- 17 48), 
author of the Seasons, though born in Scotbid, shows no trace of it in 



112 lamb's essays. 

his work. Tobias vSmollett (1721-1771, born near Dumbarton) wrote 
Roderick Random (1748); this Roderick is the Scotch " Rory," who, 
with his school-fellow and fellow-countryman Strap, is most egregiously 
gulled by the southerners on their first coming to London, h^imphrey 
Clinker is another novel of Smollett's, told in a series of letters. 
Smollett did not continue Hume's History, but wrote an independent 
history, a part of which publishers have been accustomed to print as a 
"continuation "of Hume, who only carried his work to the Revolution. 

143 ' Hugh of Lincoln.' Matthew Paris tells the tale how the Jews 
of Lincoln tortured and murdered a little Christian boy named Hugh. 
There are several old ballads on the subject. See Percy's Reliques and 
Golden Treasury Ballad Book, No. xliii., where it is a Jew's daughter 
who wiles away the "bonny boy," and throws the body into a well, 
" was fifty fathom deep," where the Lady Helen, his mother, finds it. 
Hugh is mentioned at the end of Chaucer's Prioresses Tale, the legend 
of a similar murder done on another little child for singing Alma 
Redetnptoris through the Jewry, or Jew's quarter, 

166 'B .' John Braham (1774-1856) the most famous singer of 

his day, author of several songs, including the widely-popular Death 
Nelson. He used to sing in many of Handel's oratorios. 

178 'Kemble.' (1757-1823.) The great actor who carried on the 
work of Garrick in interpreting Shakespeare. His sister Sarah became 
the celebrated Mrs. Siddons. 

195 ' Quaker ways.' Side by side with this stands the Essay A 
Quaker's Meeting. Lamb had strong sympathy with the Quakers, 
and used to borrow books by Quaker writers from his Quaker friend 
Bernard Barton. In Letter cxcii. he writes to him, "Do 'Friends' 
allow puns — verbal equivocations? They are unjustly accused of it, 
and I did my little best in the ' Imperfect Sympathies ' to vindicate 
them." 

201 'to live with them.' "That I did love the Moor to live with 
him," &c. Othello^ l, iii., 249. 

209 ' to sit a guest." 

" Sometimes that with Elijah he partook 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse." 

Milton, Paradise Regained, iL 277> 8. 

250 'scion,* in its proper sense of sucker, sapling. 

256 *Penn,' founder of Pennsylvania, author of No Cross No Crown. 
In an early letter to Coleridge (No. xxiii.) Lamb says, "I have had 
thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading a most capital 
book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's No Cross No 
Crown. I like it immensely." 



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